Probably Not a One-Shot Collection
by Pterodactyl
Summary: Ch1: Ainz wakes up. Which shouldn't be possible. And he definitely isn't within the Great walls of Nazarick. Ch2: Buku-Chan and Ainz have a breakfast chat. Ch3: A thrilling escort mission for foodstuffs goes awry. Ch4: The situation becomes clearer when a Bard comes to call. Ch5: Night time escapades. Ch6: Lunch with Touch-San.
1. Waking Up For the First Time in Forever

Bleary unfocused eyes blinked up at the unlit ceiling without comprehension. The room was dark. Sounds of a repetitive beeping filled the area along with a ghastly mechanical wheezing coming from a hole in the wall circulating air.

Vague memories from thousands of years ago swirled in his head like a thin fog bank over the nearby Katze Plains. Not that they had been called that in a thousand years or more, his subjects called the area Gown's Fields after himself. As they should, he was the last remaining Supreme Being, especially after the Players after him had shown up and died swiftly of old age.

The living were really well and truly weak.

Ainz focused on his surroundings, the fact that he couldn't see, especially in the dark, was troubling. It was a basic ability of all undead, it was as unalterable as the fact that his body was nothing but bones and that no matter how much Albedo and Shalltear wished, he could not sire children. The situation rang strange for him, neither of the two of them were in this room, and none of the other Guardians, Maids, or servants of Nazarick were tending to his every move.

The pit in his abdomen twisted with panic, this small room was not in any of his multiple palaces and it most assuredly was not within the walls of Nazarick. There were none who would dare place him in such base squalor, especially following a fight with four of the six Dragon Lords. He had just killed three of them, and the last was bowing to swear fealty to the Sorcerer King, and then _nothing…_

The beeping sped up and a ringing alarm bell went off. Ainz's eyes flared as a human nurse ran into the room without any of the customary rituals required for such a base existence to enter his presence. None of his homunculus maids had announced her, or her two armed body guards.

He vaguely recognized the things in their hands, it was an old memory, and only kept up through his voracious reading of the Library of Nazarick. After all, guns were too reliant upon science to be easily replicated in his world. For efficiency's sake it was better to craft a magic bow that used mana as a projectile, even better to make it so that it generated its own mana. Even better than that was to just use Hoyi's bow.

"Watch out, even though he's been under for three years this one was reportedly an extremely potent Magic Caster going by the name Momonga."

The pit in his abdomen twisted in panic, it had been a thousand years since he last heard that name, it was only stated by those who knew him well enough to be _threats_. The beeping in the room rose in frequency and Ainz did not feel the expected calming effect his body had upon his mind.

With a certain dread Ainz rose a trembling weakened arm into his vision. The limb felt like it weighed a ton, something that an Overlord should not have an issue with. _Skin_ covered everything. Along with _blood_ and _muscle_ and _fat_.He blinked eyes that shouldn't have had lids while running through all the magic he knew of that could have landed him with life once again.

Everything was super tier magic, and none of it was something he would have ever performed upon himself. His Kingdom needed their undying, undead, immortal absolute ruler.

He watched the nurse cautiously walk towards him like a wary animal, her body guards tightened their grip on their guns. They were really strange looking things, no elegance to their creation whatsoever, at least CZ2128's rifle suited her attire, these men couldn't hold a candle to Nazarick's Battlemaids.

Ainz didn't move his face, three and a half thousand years had eliminated most, if not all, of his former useless human habits. It was stuck in a searing glare at the nurse despite the raw curiosity and mind numbing panic overflowing him. Strong emotions were too foreign an experience, too alien to his bearing as an undead for him to comprehend rationally any longer.

She reached the beeping apparatus, _machine_ , and silenced it with a flick of a finger. He instantly thought of the magical version of it at home, [Life Tether] [Audible Alarm] [Minor Clairvoyance] [Display] It was an easy replicated set of first through fourth tier spells that was often cast upon Bluestone for the exact same purpose within medical wards.

"Momonga, Sir," she nervously stammered out. "Or, um, Suzuki Satoru..."

He cleared his throat, forcing air through unused vocal cords. The sound came out raspy, not befitting his status as Supreme Overlord of Death and Ruler of the Sorcerous Kingdom. "Lord Ainz. Neither I nor any of my subjects have uttered the name Momonga in a thousand years. Sumuzu Santoru or whatever it was, if I was ever known by it it has been too long for it to be me any longer."

He started coughing, dealing with _lungs_ and _tissue_ was an obnoxious chore. Ainz missed the cringe and gulp from the nurse as well as the widening of eyes of each of her two body guards.

"O-others have mentioned your deeds in the Dragon Lands, L-lord Ainz." _Fear_. He could identify the emotion in an instant no matter the species. The nurse trembled under his unreadable gaze.

Ainz started chuckling darkly, it was dry, coarse, and labored, but it had the deepness to it that he was accustomed to hearing. "You are afraid of me." he said simply, watching the three of them for their delightful reactions, they did not disappoint. "That means I have _power_ here."

In an instinctive reflex he checked his HP and MP, both were critically low, on par with a first or second level character at best. There were few instant death spells that used such little mana, and they were often ineffective against even the most pathetic of trash mobs.

He turned his attention on the gunmen, they were both quaking, but the one on his right had the steely gaze of someone who had the guts to actually shoot. "I don't need you to respond, your actions prove it. Let's see, I'm on Arth, no, Urth, _wait…_ Earth. Japan? A land of no magic, if I remember correctly."

"Y-yes, L-Lord Ainz." the nurse stuttered, "But your legal name is Suzuki Satoru. I have been tasked with your rehabilitation into society, and as such, I must use your..."

"No." He cut her off quickly. "I have conquered the world, ruled it for almost three thousand years. No mere _peasant_ will address me as such when not even my most trusted of guardians does so. As proven by your two guards, I have power, _magic_..."

The guard on the left spoke up first, "No one has been able to cast anything above tier three here."

Ainz looked at him like he was stupid. "Ahh, magic does work here… You would have been a terrible Yggdrasil player. Still I thank you for your information." With that he plunged his outstretched arm into the depths of a magical rip in reality and drug out a gleaming white bound book cornered in gold and rubies.

It was one of the three world items that he held in his personal possession, the first being the Dragon Sphere, the second was not truly a World item but his guild staff had the power of one, and the third was The Spell Book. It was a true marvel to find as the pages of flavor text becoming reality meant that it was terrifically potent for him.

Seven hundred and eighteen spells was really too few a number after all.

There was a ninth tier spell that was almost utterly useless in Yggdrasil but, like the Horn of the Goblin General, had proven its worth in a few key moments. Normally it wasn't accessible to a necromancer, or any form of undead. It was a hidden angelic holy spell from what he had gathered, similar to his hidden skill [The Goal of All Life is Death], that allowed one extra slot for equipment attaching a magical item directly to the player's 'soul'. This item could only be used to activate any skills or spells attached to it at the added bonus of staying in a player's inventory even after death.

World Level Items were rare, his guild was impeccable for owning eleven, now nearly thirty. New Worlders were easy pickings, low leveled idiots with no comprehension of the things they got their hands on.

The Spell Book was potent, one of the twenty, it allowed any player to cast any spell from its pages, _once_. It would drain the MP gauge of the requisite mana and stop at zero, even if one didn't have enough MP to cast the spell. Of course perusing it could be done all day and all night, as it also had the single existent copy of _**all**_ of the spells in Yggdrasil, and somehow, of his home world as well.

World Items could be equipped to the player's soul using the spell. Loopholes made it so that casting [Soul Equip] onto The Spell Book meant that the item was equipped before the curse of the Twenty could befall it and cause it to disappear.

Of course once equipped in such a manner, one could not peruse the spell list, and removing it from the slot would trigger the curse. But once there, as long as he had the MP, Ainz could cast any spell from memory. Once he found out about this loophole, he had of course memorized the whole book, making him far more deadly than any other being in the New World.

Without it he wouldn't have been able to go up against four of the Ancient Dragon Lords alone while the forces of Nazarick beat down the other two.

"So I did die..." he said quietly as he looked at the bleached white parchment and blood red ruby corner gems of the cover. "Heh, death for the undead is life. Hilarious." Ainz used his _fleshy_ fingers to carefully open the single most powerful item he possessed to a familiar page. He inhaled, reminding himself that, at least for now, he had to breathe to cast. "[Soul Equip]"

His MP drained, the book shook in his hands as it dissolved into particles of light that swirled around his body before coating him and fading.

One of the guns went off, piercing his shoulder painfully with a bullet. Red seeped out, _blood_. _Flesh_ , and torn _skin_. It reminded him that he was pathetically _alive_. More than three thousand years spent as an undead Overlord, the sight of his own bones being covered in such horrifically weak meat was disgusting.

Ainz bitterly clenched his teeth through the pain, not much more than taking the full brunt of [Vermilion Nova] without fire protection. The better question was would a heal spell work or not, given his current and former status as an undead. Not that he could cast anything at the moment, being out of MP sucked.

"What was _that_?" asked the other guard from behind his gun barrel.

"Ninth tier magic," he replied in a bored tone once the worst of the pain subsided, "it seems as if the upper echelons of magic are available, with either the right amount of MP or through special circumstances..." Ainz looked at the three of them, the nurse was blanched white in fear while the two guards held steady against whatever he might do next. "Activate Skill, [High Tiered Physical Nullification]"

The room erupted in gunshot echoing from the walls. The weakened coma patient laying on his side laughed as dozens of bullets hit him from two angles.

Ainz continued to laugh as the bullets slowly stopped coming, enjoying the raw unfiltered _fear_ rolling off of the three humans standing in front of him. They were struck speechless, mute from ravaging waves of quaking shivers and paralyzed beyond thought.

"I _am_ a level one hundred PC from Yggdrasil. It is evident that you have heard of my name. Ainz Ooal Gown. Ahh, ancient memories are coming back." He plunged his hand into a rip in the air made out of purple and black miasma to drag out his other top tier item, his staff.

Being made out of almost pure magic and triple refined prismatic ore made his Staff indestructible in the New World, a fact that had him carrying it around once the threat of the Dragon Lords became apparent. However with the new threat of _science_ looming over his head, Ainz had to wrack his mind for ancient unused memories that had nothing to do with his home world or Yggdrasil.

" _Now,_ nurse. Am I to assume that I am not the first to arrive from, what did you call it? The Dragon Lands? Would I require a healing spell or a lethal spell to rid myself from the damage your gun toting guardians have wrought?" he glared at her, "Knowing full well I am an Overlord and naturally not of the living?"

She quivered at his prone body, eyeing the spiraling golden staff with fear. One of the gaping guards gulped loudly while pulling out another magazine for his rifle. He looked at it sadly, and the arm holding it dropped to his side limply, like a puppet with cut strings. "Truth be told, L-lord," he forced the word out of his clenched mouth, "y-you are the o-only un-undead av-avatar t-t-t-t"

"Ahhhh. Interesting. Except I know it to be false. There was a demi-human, a vampire about twelve centuries back, she tried to invade my home and was torn to shreds on the second floor. I even warned her not to go in. Such a shame. Losing Players like that."

"Healing magic has not been attempted on her out of fear that it would backfire." the nurse quickly stammered out.

"You lot are useless. My Guardians would have had no trouble executing such a simple experiment." Ainz weakly drug his weary arm carrying the immensely heavy staff to rest it alongside his body, still in contact with him, as the mana recovery buffs it had were too valuable to ignore. "Ah well, it is merely a matter of time before I perform the death ritual upon myself and return to my rightful body. After that, dragging Nazarick to a third world will not be difficult. And then, I think I shall conquer this world as well."

AN: I'm trying to avoid more fandoms. Honestly I am. A friend recommended Overlord to me, the anime, I watched it because I was too sick to do anything else at the time and it was short (12 episodes). I was not expecting to genuinely like it, although as a long time lover of dead characters and a preference towards rooting for the baddies, I guess that it was a forgone conclusion I would like it.

I got hooked. See, there were innumerable little details in the anime that hinted at _more_ than the immediate visuals were showing, enough for me to read the whole book series. I was not disappointed. Not. One. Bit.

So I came up with this little plot bunny, decided to write it as a one-shot to get it out of my head, and went with the less _personally_ devastating version, where Ainz retained his magic. The better plot would have gone the other way, but, like a successful raid of Nazarick, I couldn't write it. I know that, like this one almost did, it would spiral out of control. (I was planning on getting TouchMe to show up, having Ainz mistake him for Sebas, and having a severe mental break with reality on top of a sudden nanite allergy. I almost had that be the lead in to discovering he still has access to magic, killing technology wherever he goes, but it started to snowball in length)

In the end, I decided that I have too many Overlord one-shots in my brain. I may or may not write more, but if I do, they will be attached to this one.

RFYS! (Read From You Soon)

Pterodactyl


	2. A Special Conversation

**AN:** This is the second scene I've written up in this setting. Odds are that there will be more. Sporadic, not linear, and likely not very followable. For clarification, about a year after shutdown the shitty devs released YGG2, I have it being a sequel where the level cap has been largely eliminated (although exponential xp requirements for the next level limit it thoroughly) The 9 core worlds are virtually identical but each has roughly 4 times the size of new map territory surrounding it, and prominent dungeons from the original are kept as the guilds left them for new players to try to best (prizes to those that do). This includes Nazarick and other guildbases.

Another point of clarification is that this takes place almost ten months after the first chapter, most of that time is spent doing really boring things like rehab, reeducation, and finding out that Momonga is not going to work out in the job market due to his peculiarities. His old guild is contacted as Satoru Suzuki has no relatives to take care of him. I have Bukubukuchagama and Touchme stepping up to the plate (one's a lawyer and the other is a voice actress) as they are the ones most likely to have time and money on their hands.

There's other minor details tossed in, but I think that covers the big stuff.

Like I said, this will not likely be in any specific order. The next one is up in the air, although I think it might be an alluded to scene in this chapter. Oh, name suggestions are welcome (you'll understand once you read this)

Eh, Enjoy.

.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

The mother of two prepared breakfast for her little family, both children would be up in a bit and her live-in houseguest was an insomniac, although with how little sleep Satoru got she wondered just how stable his mind was. Food was bland, oatmeal and dried fruit, nothing with too much sugar in it for her kids, and sturdy nutrition for her old guildmaster.

Two months into the odd living arrangements and Hikuri was glad to find out that Momonga was good with children. A surprising thing really, given his personality back then, and his current bizarre circumstances. Three and a half years in a coma caused by unknown interference with the nanites in his system at the Yggdrasil server shutdown. The stranger part was the shared dream they all had, creating a real long term setting that was shared among all of them.

With nobody else to turn to for help, as he had no family, and all his friends were in their abandoned guild, things turned to her and Touch San. Her acting gave her enough money to own a house outside of Tokyo, and thus enough room and free time to rehabilitate her friend. With some financial help from the rest of the guild, thankfully all of them were functioning members of society, Momonga was in a better situation than he otherwise would have been.

Especially since he was deemed unable to hold down a job.

She just hoped that nobody else managed to put two and two together from the published works of the rest of the Yggdrasil coma patients and figure out that he was the Sorcerer King going by their old guild name Ainz Ooal Gown. That would completely eradicate any possibility of getting a job for the foreseeable future.

Hikuri sat down at the dining table, listening to the running footsteps of her kids as they rapidly packed their bags for school. She smiled at them both as they careened around the sharp corner leading into the kitchen. They loudly sat down. She snickered at their simultaneous groan at the oatmeal. Momonga glided in after them without sound.

His posture was regal, and it wasn't forced either, she, Touchme, her two children, and her useless younger brother had gotten innumerable tales of Nazarick, the empire he had amassed, descriptions of the 'Dragonlands' (the common name for that world, Momonga merely called it his kingdom), and the struggles of keeping tabs on all of their NPCs to make sure that none of them killed the locals. Three and a half thousand years of stories. It was a lot to catch up on between them.

Her guildmaster could suddenly command attention from almost anyone, the way he moved his hands, his speech, the delicate articulation of someone whose every word was habitually listened to like it came from a god, it was unnerving. But having him around the house was helping her kids.

Momonga grabbed a bowl and mechanically ate. He never complained about the food, he never commented on it, and he always ate all of what he was given.

She caught him looking sullenly at his hands, he sighed. Her kids looked up at his every-man face, trying to figure out what was bothering him. Hikuri understood somewhat, after an hours long session in Yggdrasil as a Pink Prismatic Slime, coming back to reality could be a bit jarring. Particularly the tremor sense instead of sight. Near the end she expected to see her slime body in the mirror instead of her human face. Once that became a regular issue, she quit. But for her friend, it was likely a million times worse, the skeletal visage had been more than a mere avatar, for most of his life now it had supposedly been his real body.

"What are you thinking about Momonga?" Hikuri asked in a medium to high pitched voice.

"Last night, I decided to solo a dungeon. Mostly to see how far I could get."

"Okay." she prodded, interest peaked. Both kids were raptly following his every word.

"I beat it. On my own. With only one hundred levels, the guild staff, the Spell Book, and all of my inventory at the server shutdown. It took me the better part of ten hours to do it, and it hurt to see them all so lifeless, simple programs moving their bodies instead of the souls all of you poured into them."

She got a feeling about where this was going. The tone of his voice held just the barest hint of disbelief, shock, and an old apologetic streak that was part of his personality before the coma. He held the silence for a second, building up the tension for a grand reveal, she didn't remember him having this kind of flare before.

"I one life soloed Nazarick."

Even though Hikuri was expecting it, her breath still hitched. Every time there was a raid on their old guild base it made the news, typically because it was done by ever larger hoards of players numbering in the thousands. The most recent attempt had almost double the first massive wave at 2,987, still nobody made it beyond level eight.

"Are the Devs giving you anything for it? That's a big achievement. Kids, get to school. And don't mention Nazarick to anybody, we don't want to be inundated with crazed fans trying to figure out how he did it."

"Alright, we remember the last time."

Momonga waited until the doors closed behind them. "Bukubukuchagama, they're letting me make up my own class. Ranks one through ten. Called Spell Crafter, it'll allow me to use preexisting spells and crystals to create higher tiered spells. I'll also be able to spend XP on individual spells to enhance their effects or drop the MP cost. It was a basic thing over there, altering spells like that, not on the fly of course, but it was doable. The sheer mana cost was the major limiter."

"That's a big thing. Congratulations." she said in a muted congratulatory tone, an offshoot of her mom voice whenever her kids did something unexpected.

"Nazarick is… not the same. Buku chan, I spent my life with them, the npcs. Seeing your twins as children again, watching the mechanical movements of the maids as they move around like puppets instead of like people, the lack of verbal banter between Demiurge and whoever he is trying to best, how Shalltear didn't smile in glee at the thought of a fight, Albedo was silent, my Son didn't even react to my presence when I entered the treasury. The dryads, treants, lizardmen, dwarves, Hammsuke, everything I added in during my reign that made it more of my home was gone. It was all so wrong. I only bested the dungeon because there were no souls behind their motions."

She tried not to react to him referring to the NPCs as their children, every time it came up was strange. Her kids were apparently very similar to Aura and Mare at the beginning. Heterochromia notwithstanding. Hikuri brought up a glass of tea to her lips and nodded slowly.

"This world is awful Bukubukuchagama. I miss the clear skies and untouched lands of my home, the fields and prairies around Nazarick, my capital cities Carne and E-Rantel and their bustling markets full to the brim with magical trinkets and goods from around the world. I miss them. The NPCs we all created and the few denizens of that world I granted immortality to. I want my body back so that I could drag all of it here."

Hikuri stopped drinking, most of this was stuff that she had already heard, but the last bit was new. "How would you do that?" she asked in a baffled tone, immediately she regretted it.

He stared right at her, his eyes bored holes into her, an imaginary outline of his avatar flickered for a second, the embodiment of death. "There was native magic over there, soul working and the various uses of souls to achieve effects. I would have been remiss in my duties to not put labor into learning it. The rank magic and systems of Yggdrasil invaded this older structure, changing both slightly. This occurred at the server shutdown and drug us over there to fuel the soul magic system changing, in bodies forged from the data in the game. Nazarick came along because I had the guild staff equipped and I was sitting on the throne, linking me, the fuel for the transfer, to Nazarick and all of its contents through familiar connection. The shutdown threw our souls into a world that could utilize the data attached to them to create a physical manifestation of it, making an anchor over there that weakened upon death enough to pull people back here. Once a soul bond is generated, it can't be severed, so my soul is still tied to the real Nazarick. However dragging physical things across will take a lot of energy, enough to drain a soul completely and kill off the caster, unless that caster has a secondary energy sustaining their functions, like I had with the negative energy as an Overlord, giving me enough time to have my soul regenerate the used energy. As far as I found out, I was the only Player who could utilize soul magic, I think because our souls were drained severely in the transfer."

She listened to his speech, not that her mind would let her turn away from his effortless charisma, all the way through. Momonga often would talk about the magic in the Dragonlands as if it were science instead of the mystical.

"In simpler terms, my body did not need my soul to function so I could perform elaborate soul magic. I also think that the soul magic there might work here."

"What?" Hikuri exclaimed. "Why?"

"Rank magic stayed with the players who were affected by the soul magic. Tiers one through three. I've been talking to the others, none of the spells work _well_. This makes little sense until you account for soul magic's changes on the rank system, causing large mana depletion at casting, attaching spells directly to one's soul memory, and giving the spells a degree of customization. With MP caps on our human bodies matching that of a first or second level character it is no wonder that nobody would be able to cast higher. But if you power it using your soul instead of a capped mana pool, even over rank magic should be able to function. I just need a grimoire of death and I would be willing to try."

"A grimoire of death… it's been years Momonga, and magic was never my strong suit in the game."

" _Game_. Yes." he sighed, "A grimoire of death is the only necessary item for a player to cast a permanent species transformation into an elder litch. It is a tenth tier spell. It is the only spell of that caliber I would be willing to try such a stunt on, as my body would then be running on negative energy instead of a soul and chemical reactions."

She shivered at the thought, "Isn't that like suicide? I know that you were a necromancer, but this stuff seems wrong somehow."

Satoru's mind began racing, trying to figure out where his logic was incorrect, "No, it should work. I calculated out every last shred of magical confluence and I even accounted for the possibility of celestial alignments, negative aligned zones, and a lack of mana in this world."

"Different kind of _wrong,_ Momonga. You're talking about breaking physics and bringing in everything from Yggdrasil to earth. Just because you can doesn't mean that you should."

"Ahh." he said after a second of thought. "I guess that if you say it would break physics then it probably does. I'm still relearning common sense here, very different logic you see."

Hikuri sighed, subtle dissuasion was needed on her old guildmaster, and it was conversations like this that made it painfully obvious that he wouldn't be able to hold down a job. His outlook on life was too different from everybody else's, the fact that magic was not part of physics often confused him, and like the other Yggdrasil coma patients, he scared people. She admitted that he scared her, although it was for very different reasons than most. "I don't think you're getting it, look," she stalled, "just, don't kill yourself."

Momonga was caught off guard at the suggestion, "A fundamental transformation spell wouldn't be killing myself. Quite the opposite, it would lengthen my soul's bond to the physical in undeath."

If she didn't know better it sounded as if he were insane, and trying to wrap her mind around how effortless he made magic sound, and just how naturally it came to him was impossible. Hikuri stifled a growl in her throat, but let her voice drop in a clear indication to him that she was displeased. "I know that this is hard for you Momonga, but you need to accept things how they are here."

He stiffened at her tone, "I may seem unafraid of death to you, but I assure you that is not the case. I've lived almost four thousand years. A decade is as much time to me as an hour is for you. If I remember correctly a human's lifespan is a meager seventy years, my body is nearing forty, that gives me a pathetic three more hours to my lifespan if I do nothing about it."

Hikuri understood his point in principal, it was one of the many philosophical debates about immortality, the stretching eons out in front of you, the lack of motivation that would likely cause, and the loneliness. She wondered where his seemingly endless patience had come from, this was likely the case. With trepidation she nodded her head slowly, sipping at her tea and giving him a _look_ that she hoped conveyed how little she thought of his quest for immortality.

"As I expected. I am sorry Bukubukuchagama, but I must prevent my soul from leaving my physical body. Unlike the living, I have no fear of undeath, provided I perform the appropriate preparations, which I know how to do precisely because I am undead. This living body feels confining, weak, it is a joke compared to what I am accustomed to and just like it is encouraged for a person to better their lives, I consider this to be bettering mine."

She swallowed her tea sharply, the hot liquid seared down her throat painfully. He paused and switched tactics, using a method of persuasion picked up all those centuries ago from Jircniv.

"Would you not wish to return to your Yggdrasil body? The raw power you had in a fight, taking innumerable attacks head on and weaving around a battle like pink lightning, the tremor sense that all slimes share guiding your movement from one enemy to the next as you carve the way for others to pierce through the defenses, if I could make it real, would you accept? "

His words were directed at her, despite the heat burning her throat, Hikuri felt frozen, unable to answer. Memories of the guild's teamwork and camaraderie sparked by Momonga simply stating her tactics flooded her. The teacup shook in her hands as her guildmaster held the moment in time without effort, an eerie effect that felt like it had magic behind it, but without the lightshow it was apparent that his [Time Stop] spell from back then hadn't been cast.

They locked gazes, hers a struggle between yes and no, and his an unwavering solid **of course** like it was a fact of nature. The illusion of his avatar ghosted in front of him again, a skeletal face with a terrifying but friendly rictus grin.

Hikuri felt her heart beat, once, twice, her breath wouldn't come.

If it hadn't been for the terrifying encounter with the self proclaimed Sphinx player, she wouldn't believe any of his words, but after that fight, even though it was a fight of swords, staves, and low tier magic, Hikuri knew that magic for the people of the Dragonlands _worked_. Momonga wasn't one to dangle what ifs that he didn't think he could deliver, he never was, even back then.

Her mind raced between thoughts of being Bukubukuchagama the Pink Slime, main tank of Ainz Ooal Gown, and her responsibilities to her children, for the love of voice acting, and her life in Japan.

The moment shattered with the shrill whistle chime of Hikuri's phone. Momonga's eyes darted away from hers and to the device, confusion evident on his face until memory of what it did returned. He waved a hand through the air, giving her permission to answer it before he leaned back in the chair.

Hikuri stumbled over her own hands to grab the phone and swipe across the touchscreen. She glanced at Momonga, whose expression was unreadable again, a newfound trait that was supposedly from so many years of not having a face to move. "Heey Nita." she said once the name on her caller ID registered as her agent. "What's up?"

"Okay, first off I scored you a spot on a new ecchi game, right up your alley, audition is tomorrow." The words came out fast and rushed, just like always, and after the conversation with Momonga, Hikuri needed a touch of normalcy. "Secondly, the whole industry is blowing up right now, big news story of the week in gaming, Nazarick got beat. I know you play sometimes and I figured that you should at least know before you come into the studio today."

She glanced nervously at her guildmaster, "Yeah, I heard. Actually it's been years since I've played. Anyways, thanks for the heads up Nita."

"Yup. Bye!" the line clicked off.

Hikuri let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. "If _Nita_ already knows about your escapades last night then keeping quiet is going to be hard for my kids at school. Thankfully nobody knows I was part of our old guild." she held up a hand to stop the question before it could happen, "I'm proud to be a member Momonga, but even you have to admit Ainz Ooal Gown had a reputation."

He nodded, they were still considered one of the top tier guilds in _any_ recent DMMO and the guild hadn't even been active in the last two years of Yggdrasil or in either year of YGG2 being out.

The name Ainz Ooal Gown had been reserved by the (not quite so) shitty devs for the group that managed to get to the Throne of Kings, his by right now, they had figured correctly that nobody but the creators would stand a chance of getting through that barraging gauntlet of gaming hell.

"Anyway, could you pick up the groceries? Today's going to be a long recording day and the kids..."

Momonga interupted her, "are always hungry after school. I've been here for a few months Buku chan. I am capable of feeding them adequately, just like raising Aura and Mare into the fine adults they are."

"Uh huh." Hikuri said in a deadpan, just thinking about her old NPCS as people threw her for a loop, his reality was a weird one. "I gotta go." she stood up from her seat and readied her purse for the day, bus pass, wallet, and a small magical dagger that Momonga had foisted upon her after the attack the previous month that would layer fatigue on those whom it cut aside from its owner. It was the smallest weapon that she could legally carry around that he had in his (insanely there) inventory, and in typical Momonga style it was encrusted in red gems and wound in gaudy gold wire.

She walked out the front door, waving at her guildmaster until he was out of sight.

Hikuri dodged into a small alley way and fell to the ground like a puppet with it's strings cut. "Oh god, I'm scared that he'll actually be able to do it. Brave face. Come on, get up. Work time, you're an actress dammit." She inhaled, exhaled, collected her thoughts for the day, and slowly rose from her position, grateful that she had gone with the brown pants instead of the white ones. The grime was less visible. Her shoulders still shook in fear over one of her friends trying to kill himself, no matter how he viewed it, overlords were evolved elder litches, which were in turn evolved skeleton mages, and all of them were undead, emphasis on _dead_.

Pink slimes were alive though, sort of, in their own way. She shook her head to banish the thoughts and walked to the train station.


	3. Escort Missions Are Still A Thing

A/N: Chapter three folks. Have fun with this one, it's set between the first and second chapters. Any suggestions are welcome for Hikuri's kid's names. Seriously… I'm _clueless_ as to what to call them. Chapter 4 is in the works. Although, don't expect it any sooner than this chapter was from the last.

Here's to a good translation from Nigel-sama! May volume 12 be spectacular, and let us hope that Aiz's death is merely a complicated ruse on Demiurge's end to give the Sorcerer King a resurrection myth to his name as well.

.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o

Hikuri was on the fence about letting her old guildmaster stay with her and her two children. The 'insanity' label was nerve wracking to her maternal instincts. If Momonga were to stay, then leaving him alone with her kids would be an eventual necessity, one that she wanted to say yes and no to at the same time. The only thing that allowed her to say yes was that his insanity spawned from him believing that he _was_ his game avatar, body and mind, and not some horrible homicidal or pedophilic nature. The 'no' end of the argument was her kids, while they had met each other, and Momonga seemed to get along with the both of them in an oddly paternal manner, _insanity_ was a strong diagnosis.

The story about using dragons as cargo freight that he told the two of them was amusing, if bizarre. Ten year old memories of Yggdrasil had her wondering which of the nine realms he had supposedly conquered that would require dragon freight from one side of the map to the other, none of the worlds in the game were big enough to take longer than a few hours to traverse the whole length of their continents on foot. And certainly dragon freight would have been expensive to maintain.

She shook her head. Try it out for a week, see how it turned out, if it wasn't going to work then Touch-san would find somebody else to handle their old friend.

His avatar was undead, what little she could remember about the fluff text and negs to his build was that food and water wasn't needed. The ward Doctors also informed her of his sleeping habits, or lack thereof. _"He responds well to guildmates,"_ the line from the overly happy always smiling doctor floated to her thoughts, _"Anybody else and he can be downright cruel. That's why we contacted you..."_

So Hikuri prepped their smog protection gear, she needed to go shopping, and finding out what Momonga would eat was essential long term. His delusional dream rambling made him out to be some sort of king, and good food went along with being rich. Good food was relatively expensive, especially _real_ grown food, and although she was getting some financial aid from the rest of their guild and the government, food that would be passable for a dictator ruler with a supposed violent streak when things didn't go his way could end up breaking her bank quick.

"Momonga!" she yelled from the bottom floor up the narrow stairway to where all of their sleeping quarters and computer plugins were. "Come on, we're going grocery shopping!"

There was a slight rustle of airflow through the house as he opened a door. He moved silently down stairs that always creaked with the slightest pressure. Each footstep fell like a feather, yet had gravitas, his clothes, though averagely tight, still seemed to billow behind him as he moved. Hikuri bit her lip in worry as his regal posture ghosted into view.

"Very well. A small quest. With a guildmate even! Such treasured times will not be forgotten." Momonga's hand waved in a circle motion in front of him, acquiescing to her request like a king straight out of a medieval movie, ending on a powerful grab at the air.

In her opinion it was a line worthy of any hamfisted script writer said by a _serious_ method actor. To the point where, despite it sounding stupid, Hikuri couldn't tell if it was acted or not. The doctors orders were to try to get him to accept reality **as** reality, and to do so as subtly as possible. Internally she sighed, outwardly, she nodded, "Uh huh." she said in a deadpan mom voice, like dealing with her sons in their terrible threes she had to ask, "Is there anything specific you want to eat?"

"Food. Yes, I am still getting accustomed to needing to partake of mortal's dining habits." Momonga looked straight at her, "Bukubukuchagama, I do not even know what would be required to _create_ a balanced meal. Food was left up to Fuko Ryoricho on the ninth floor if we were entertaining guests. For the sake of your children, have them at the forefront of your mind upon this hunt for foodstuffs. Please do not mind my tastes."

"If you say so." Hikuri began putting on her smog gear, coat and gloves, followed by her breathing mask and goggles. Momonga held out his arms as if he was expecting a troupe of maids to come waltzing in to dress him. She dropped her vocal tone, "You're dressing yourself."

His jaw set instantly and his eyes seemed to glint red for a moment. The room chilled around him. Hiding her worry over the situation, Hikuri held her ground and stared him straight in the eyes with her best 'hurry up and do it you brat' look possible. Momonga blinked and the moment broke. He hastily put his smog gear on. She relaxed. _Apparently guildmates are safe from outbursts._

They left for the store, a ritzy one nearer town so that they could get good nutrition pills and better flavored pouches along with _real_ produce.

Once out of the house Momonga began telling her of Nazarick, and of the few times they had gone all out with a feast. It eventually meandered into an eager telling of Sebas's wedding, about how Aura and Mare both got flat out drunk on wines made from healing potions while Shalltear teased the bride, the first human to live in Nazarick, apparently named Tsuare. Something named Hammsuke did something odd, but what it was exactly, Hikuri couldn't bring it to mind, even seconds after her friend told her. So she nodded along.

It was best to just let him ramble about imaginary events after all… most likely… maybe… probably not. He paused in his speech, drawing her attention back to him without doing anything. There was a small smile on his otherwise eerily stone cold expression.

"I granted her immortality for Sebas's sake. They were in love, and for all of you, I couldn't allow any of our guild's children to be unhappy in life." His voice gained an odd wistfulness to it that her memory said was off, Hikuri couldn't remember the last time he had acted so well back when their guild tried for an RP night, it was a quality that she was sure would get him into a game or two as a shogun character or a regal king, work that he might be able to do despite his insanity.

She led him through the concrete and brick jungle and even underground and onto the transit train.

Momonga eyed his surroundings with a keen eye, "Buku-chan, we are being followed." he stated simply as they walked down an alley boxed in on both sides by concrete walls and only a smaller walkway leading off to one side halfway down.

"Are you the damned Sorcerer King?" rang angrily from behind Hikuri and Momonga, echoing off of old concrete walls.

Hikuri stiffened while Momonga calmly stopped walking. Her eyes flickered over to her legally insane guildmaster, in the day and a half she had him in her care he had seemed moderately lucid, and they had chatted amicably about her life with only odd stories and mannerisms indicating his diagnosis.

He waited a moment before drawing up to his full height and taking a slow single rotating backstep towards their stalker. Hikuri latched onto Momonga's arm, hoping to be able to hurry along. A hot breeze rolled through the street, and she gulped at the oddity of it.

Momonga's face went blank. "And if I am, mortal?" he asked in a booming baritone.

"Then that means you are the one who killed my wife, my cubs, and _me_." The man snarled from a few feet away.

"I must presume that you are a Player." Momonga gripped his chin in thought, "Cubs… Ah yes, the third beastman uprising when I was still conquering the second continent. They only felt assured of victory because of your presence, the Great Sphinx Meowgar. Your cubs were raised by Nazarick. Playerkin are too valuable to eliminate." Momonga said in a blasé tone.

Hikuri swallowed, this was the insanity that the doctors talked about. The game world was their reality, apparently both of them thought it was real. There were others from the Yggdrasil coma patients who had woken up and written what they claimed to be real life events, but they all read like game fiction. The only one she had met was Momonga, and up to this moment he had been offputting, but mostly aware of his situation.

"I am sorry Bukubukuchagama." He said at her reaction, "You must understand that I am undead, my only allegiance is to our guild and Nazarick. Killing thousands is as easy to do as walking across a park."

"Thousands?" the other man asked, "By the time I appeared over there and met my wife, you already had _millions_ of deaths on your hands."

"I won't deny that. I also have no regrets concerning those deaths, whether it is sooner or later, all living things must die, if it was by my hands or not shouldn't matter." He paused, "If I remember correctly the population rebounded three fold by the end of fifty years and the overall quality of life of my subjects was far greater than _this_ disgusting pollution ridden planet boasts."

The man crouched and hissed, slipping his right hand into a fold in his shirt and drawing out a sword. "At least here I can get my revenge Caster."

Hikuri's eyes widened in shock, Momonga stood still, his gaze focused on the human in front of him. "Very well. A duel. You have drawn a sword, so shall I."

The former beast man laughed, "Your character data is everywhere online, _Momonga_. There is no way for you to equip a sword. _Even_ if you use a cash shop item like you were supposedly so fond of using in the game. Today, your filthy guild finally falls."

Momonga grinned, "Filthy? You wound my pride." he said in a mocking manner, his chuckles grew malicious to the player in front of him, " _I_ put my character data online. If you seriously think I wouldn't lie about my capabilities you are a fool."

"Casters can't equip swords in Yggdrasil."

"I know of a few ways for casters to equip swords, even without resorting to the added methods from my lands. You are wasting our time, _Meowgar_." Momonga said forcefully, both hoping that the man in front of him would leave and wishing for a battle to test out his strength against a potentially equal foe. Bukubukuchagama lightly pulled at his overshirt, indicating that she wanted to get away from the brewing scene.

"Sorcerer King Ainz Ooal Gown." The man spat the words out with vitriol, "I will end your tyranny here and now."

Hikuri looked at her guildmaster's stoic face, trying to puzzle through the situation. Their old guild shouldn't have any bearing on anything, let alone be used as a name. Momonga's posture tightened into something akin to what her mind registered as his combat pose. It had been almost ten years since she had seen it last, and it was through his avatar, but the forward lean and finger twitching were identical.

He smiled, "So be it. When you lose I will be claiming my rites as a necromancer upon your body." Momonga looked at his human friend, "However, my guildmate has nothing to do with our fight. Leave her out of this."

"Like hell heteromorph. All of you monsters need to be exterminated."

"I disagree with that. My kingdom ran perfectly well accepting all sentient races, you might even call it a utopia of sorts. Nazarick's legacy upon the universe has proven to be beneficial, and as its leader I accept the glory that is due."

"Glory? By the time I showed up over there you had slain millions in your horrific conquest of the mainland. The humans even told of a tale when you unleashed [Ia Shub Niggurath] upon an army of five _hundred_ _thousand_ men, killing all but a hundred and summoning _five_ of those monstrosities."

"Your numbers are off wildly. But the incident you are talking about happened so long ago that I hardly recall it except as a moment of pride. Five younglings is the upper limit of the spell. I am the only one to achieve such a feat." Momonga said with a certainty that had Hikuri trying to back away, the sword wielding man snarled like an angry cat at her movement.

Hikuri's eyes widened as Momonga plunged his arm calmly into a purple-black rip in reality like it was as common a thing to do as lighting a match. The other man, who was wielding a flaming sword, didn't even flinch at the reality breaking occurrence.

"I **am** the sorcerer king, Ainz Ooal Gown. Had you not challenged me I would not trouble myself with your existence. However, you have threatened me, and you have threatened the life of my guildmate."

He pulled out a long gleaming white sword with rapidly changing runes carved in the surface like charred cracks on bone.

The ragged looking man chuckled darkly. "Your character data is everywhere online _Momonga_. You have no levels that allow you to equip a sword."

Hikuri huddled behind her guildmaster despite the fact that he was now carrying a sword and having a conversation nested in insanity. "Did I not just mention other methods of equiping swords? You honestly think that _levels_ would still have bearing on my capabilities? I rule over the entire world. I can dictate how resources are allocated, and the people in my kingdom are no exception. The Dwarven runesmiths forged this with my aid as a celebratory gift to my thousandth year of reign."

"Runesmithing?" he asked incredulously, "Even I know that can't hold a candle to even a low tier Yggdrasil item in potency."

"The control and trade of information was important in Yggdrasil. You must have been an even worse player than I originally thought." Momonga told him bluntly. "It makes me wonder how you even got up to the level needed to get through my [High tiered Physical Immunity], surely the PvP at the end of Yggdrasil had not degraded to such a meager state?"

"Doesn't matter here. You're still a Caster. And I am a Fighter." He changed his stance so that his flaming sword was upright, the dark orange flickers surrounding it raised high into the smog filled night. "Magic got capped, skills didn't. I can take you."

"If you really think that, you are more a fool than I thought." He replied calmly as he raised his own sword to a similar position. "[Message] Buku-chan, Can you…" he told her over a private channel before glancing her way, "Nevermind. Run, hide, whatever, this will get tricky without higher tiered magic."

Her eyes widened in shock at the blatant use of a Yggdrasil ability in reality, she nodded quickly to show she heard his instruction, old habits forged in artificial circumstances flared and it was everything she could do to avoid running into the thick of things like the tank she was. Hikuri stepped away from her old guildmaster, letting him take point and hoping that he was every bit the exceptional PvPer that she remembered.

The message spell ended for them both with a clacha sound.

Fire arched at them in a physics defying spiral from across the alley. Momonga's expression hardened into a blank face. The runes stopped spinning to land on a set of eight letters, the blade glowed an eerie light blue and frost appeared on the ground.

Momonga sliced at the tube of fire, causing it to fizzle out midair before it could do damage. The cracks of black running the length of the blade jolted along the surface before beginning anew with their rapid switching.

The other player went pale. Hikuri shivered in the suddenly chilled air, although with the next swing of the flaming sword the temperature climbed back upwards. She decided to heed Momonga's command and hid around the corner of the nearest building where she could still see what was happening.

The both of them continued to swing their swords, it was apparent that Momonga was not quite as fast as his opponent but with flames and ice being flung around left and right they were stuck in a standstill. The former sphinx player panted in exertion, having done most of the attacking, flames licked the smog choked ground and ash flurried around them both. Frost bloomed like mold on food over every surface giving the area a marbled silver glint over charcoal black.

Hikuri was glad that she hadn't been in their striking distance, but the sight left her speechless. The effects were all common in Yggdrasil, flame and ice attacks were basic staples of the magical entities in the game. But those same attacks should never be so easily reproduced in reality. Her hands cradled her neck, covering the computer plugin on the back, confirming that it was reality and not a nanite triggered hallucination.

Momonga's sword paused again, this time on different runes. He drug it across the ground, leaving a thin trail of water wherever the tip touched. With a deep inhale to catch his own breath, breath that he should not have needed, Momonga sliced at the air, letting the spray of water arc into a segment of a circle.

Flames roared at the spot he paused at, but Momonga was already running around his opponent, copying the drag and arcing slice to complete the circle.

The haggard former sphinx snarled again, the sword in his hand erupted into an inferno. Flames rotated around into a sphere above the tip of the blade. The two combatants faced each other for a moment, panting from the exertion. Neither of the two had landed a hit on the other.

Momonga drew a small circle at the edge of the larger one, leaving a thin trail of water on the burnt ground. It glittered oddly in the dim smoggy alley, as if reflecting light that wasn't there.

With a swirl of runes so fast the bleached white sword in his hands looked grey, Momonga twirled around to another point of the circle he drew, slicing at the ball of fire coming at him with a void type negation spell radiating from his sword. The inferno was consumed into a dwindling dark purple aura, before both flickered out.

In the moment of confusion on the attacker's end, he switched the sword back to the water runes and placed yet another small circle. "Let me ask you something. Did you play Yggdrasil before the shitty devs lifted the level cap?"

Hikuri gasped at the question, suddenly recognizing the low level spell boost for water based magic. Even back when Nine's Own Goal was merely a clan the tactic was considered worthless because the required setup was too complicated to bother with in combat when a few levels were easy to grind for and got you the same effects at a higher mana consumption rate. She couldn't remember the last time she witnessed the water based spells to conjure such magic.

The sword's runes began swirling once more. Momonga held the bleached bone white sword at the ready, a real stance that she vaguely remembered Takemikazuchi talking about in front of the ice bug he created as a floor guardian. It wasn't one of the showy default stances that warrior-classes learned as a skill, like those the sphinx player was using, it was a completely functional real stance from medieval textbooks their guildmate transferred to the Nazarick library.

Momonga parried another flame lancing at him from a distance, the sword glowed blue as the runes paused for a moment, allowing for the elemental defense. "I am guessing not. [Water Bind]"

The edges of the circle, only just barely wet, welled up into a swirling barrier. Tendrils lashed inward, wrapping themselves around legs, arms, and the man's neck.

"You would have known exactly what I was doing from the start if you had." Momonga said smugly, his baritone voice carried over the sound of rushing water. "Wasting a Player's life is a shame. But you attacked first. I know I won't regret this." the runes flickered to a new set running the length of the blade and the sword started sparking with jagged yellow.

He plunged it straight into the circular torrent. The player's body seized up and then went limp, his sword dropped to the ground, the flames subsided but didn't go out. Steam bellowed up from the orange blade. Another minute passed before the water spell timed out.

Momonga glanced at his blade, the runes spun and the summoned water evaporated like it had never been there, he placed it back into his inventory.

Hikuri trembled from her hiding spot, trying to grasp what had just happened. The (dead?) body of their attacker lay on the ground like a dropped marionette, limbs haphazardly sprawled in impossible angles. The sword was beginning to cause the asphalt around it to bubble.

"Shall I claim this blade a second time?" Momonga stiffly said from outside the range of his water spell. "As a sphinx you should have a resistance to electrical attacks. Stand down and I shall let you live under the agreements that Sir KlubSanger has set down for us all to abide by."

"Death Sight huh?" the sprawled man whispered from the ground. "Figures it's useless to play dead against a filthy elder litch." he lifted a twitching arm, "[Holy Arrow]"

A glowing rod appeared at his palm, thin and sharp. It lanced straight through Momonga's chest. He fell to his knees silently as Hikuri shrieked out his name from her hiding spot.

Dark laughter resonated through the alley, punctuated with an occasional wet cough. "You want to start a magic duel against _ME_?" he stuck his hand into his inventory and pulled out a dark purple staff, encrusted in silver jewels, "I am the sorcerer king." a gem flared green before shooting the poison spell at his target, "I am the greatest mage in the annals of time." another gem burst into light, this time the purple of void magic, there was a sickening crunch and strangled scream from their attacker, "I am the ruler of Nazarick," a third gem burst into red, cutting his skin like a fillet, a gurgled scream was heard, "A supreme being in the eyes of her denizens. I am Ainz Ooal Gown! And you asked for this death when you first attacked me and my guildmate!" the last gem glowed and Hikuri heard a sound that had been mimicked by her acting coworkers in tragic scenarios.

A final rattling exhale followed by silence.

The real thing was gut wrenching, and try as she might, tears streamed down her face even as her guild master used his staff to prop his body up off of the ground and hobble over to the dead man in front of both of them.

"A player's death is such a waste." Momonga said to the now silent alley. Speech wasn't coming to Hikuri's lips, _sound_ failed the voice actress for the first time since she could remember as she watched her human looking guildmaster lean over the corpse just like she remembered him doing after every PK or boss fight.

A thin wispy ball of _something_ floated up to reach Momonga's hand, the outline of his avatar ghosted around his human form like a shadow cast by lightning.

It was an old familiar sight from their Yggdrasil days, but somehow, her friend's death ritual seemed so much more gruesome than before as he gripped the foggy sphere like a trapped animal in sort of bony, sort of fleshy fingers, a red glow emitted from his eyes, and placed the pinpoint of fog into his seemingly fleshless jaw and _bit_.

Sound erupted around them both, with the honking of cars, rushing of trains, distant communications of people moving about, and wailing of sirens.

Momonga delicately grabbed the flaming sword by the hilt, and stuffed it into a crack of black miasma at his fingertips. His hand returned with an infinity haversack, which he began stuffing with a random assortment of items pulled out of thin air around the corpse.

Hikuri felt numb watching everything transpiring around her, and could do little more than stare pitifully at the terrifying man in front of her as his attention shifted from his slain enemy back to her.

Glowing red dots set deep into pits of eye sockets glared at her without pity or remorse. She blinked, a reflex that her body forced after not doing so for too long. Her heart felt like it stopped.

The visage of Momonga's avatar disappeared without a trace. The aura he exuded of being a rightful king snapped back into place. "Ah, Buku-chan, I must apologize for having to perform an escort mission upon our quest for foodstuffs." his body glowed briefly with the color of a [Lethal] spell. He visibly collapsed onto the staff in his hand, gasping for air through his face mask.

It took a minute for him to recover. Hikuri leaned against the wall she was still hiding behind, trying to wrap her mind around what she had just seen. Momonga limped over to her, leaning against the wall and placing the purple staff back into midair.

"Fear. I am sorry that you feel that Bukubukuchagama. I will explain everything when we return to your home. Just know this, I will not harm you, your children, or any of our guildmates. _That_ I swear upon my name, upon Nazarick, and upon my honor as the Sorcerer King."


	4. Bard's Orders are Doctor's Orders

_**AN:**_ Chapter four folks. Set directly after no. 1. I thank you all for your reviews, I appreciate every single one, even if I might come off as… I don't know… a disagreeable twit… in my replies. I hope that you enjoy this chapter, no combat (sorry guys) but with luck interesting. As always, constructive criticism is VERY welcome. Please tell me where you think I need to improve as a writer (at least inside the scenes, the grand scope sized jumping around will likely not get fixed) I guarantee I can handle anything you can throw at me.

Also, this will not be a happy story long term. Somebody suggested I change the genre to suit this, and I will.

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Ainz' dark chuckles petered out after the mortals left the room. Worry clutched his _beating heart_ as the silence fell, his lungs filled after he felt suffocation for the first time in his memory, the freshly bound wound in his shoulder stung, and despite the fact that he could see in the now lit room, it wasn't any comfort to his mind.

The air filter choked a couple of times before resuming the mechanical humming, a simple [Repair] spell would do wonders on the wheezing thing, but even that was out of his reach currently. The urge to go home to Nazarick overtook Ainz but the broken and worn down equipment in a falling apart room was all that met his gaze.

His _fleshy_ hands gripped his staff, hoping that the MP restoration effects would hurry up. Mana fatigue ate at his body, making limbs feel more like lead than before the [Soul Equip] spell. It was not often that he had needed to use so much MP that he was completely drained. _That fight_ was pretty much the last time, and his guardians had gotten him to a safe location instantly, even though he was far from helpless even then.

There was a jingle moving towards the door off to his left as well as the soft padding of well-worn shoes. Ainz felt his _stomach_ twist into a knot. This state of being was terribly unbecoming of his status in unlife. While gunfire was proven to not harm him, that did not necessarily hold true for other forms of damage. Sure a third tier magical attack didn't hold a lot of credence against him normally, but if it was cast by another Player above level 60 it could still do damage, and the lack of HP meant that even one strike would be lethal. Then there were Skills, his were still available, but so many of them were tied to high tiered magic that most were useless, a fighter would have nothing but usable skills and low tier magic, making their builds far more viable here than his own.

There were also inventories and items to contend with, if the pool of people with Yggdrasil items were confined to those who stayed till the end of the servers then Ainz knew generally what most of them were capable of, and what their arsenals contained.

Ancient memories of this world told him that jingling in time with footsteps was not normal. In fact, it was strange even in his own lands. Ainz signaled for the invisible eight edge assassins to investigate this anomaly with his free hand. There was no reply, none of their familiar scurrying, and, like his maids and other servants, none of them around.

Ainz gulped down a buildup of _saliva_ with a thought of just how disgusting _flesh_ was. Returning to his undead state was a priority.

The door opened with a slight creak and a timid looking brown haired man peeked into the room, the nurse from before stood behind him, now almost absurdly calm. The _fear_ from just minutes ago was nowhere to be found. Light glinted off of the glasses on the man's face, hiding his expression as he slammed the door open with an exuberant bang.

Every step of his jingled, red shoes and green socks trimmed in little round bells peeked out from underneath light teal pants and a white medical coat. The shoes matched a similarly colored pair of gloves and sleeves.

The man skipped into the room like he had trouble staying on the ground while moving. Ainz watched the door shut itself behind the newcomer, who was frenetically searching the top surface of his clipboard like it was a lifeline. Unwanted breath hitched in his throat at the thought that this man may be another Player, certainly there was no other reason to wear such garishly decorated shoes, or presumably, full outfit underneath a doctor's attire.

Ainz' mana pool regained one point, enough for one spell with the aid of the soul equipped Spell Book. He relaxed his deadlocked grip on his staff, _flesh_ covered knuckles turned red with renewed blood flow. There was enough to do defensive magic if need be.

Foppish bangs dangled over thick glasses as the man seemed to suddenly get over the bout of nervousness as if it had never been there. There was a quick bow and discardment of the clipboard into a pocket that should have been too small to fit. Trailing wisps of dark purple miasma around his fingers lent credence to the _Player_ theory.

"Hello Lord Ainz Ooal Gown, I am the doctor in charge of your rehabilitation and readjustment into society at large." This human 'doctor' reminded him of Demiurge, the voice was similar, it cascaded over the ears in pleasant ripples, and it was only a side skill that prevented Ainz from lulling into a hypnotic passive state. The Nurse's second reaction made more sense, high level bard skills could leave those affected numb to other influences.

That narrowed the list of prospective Players down considerably, and down further to accommodate only those who were dedicated enough to Yggdrasil to see its last moments. Then there was the fact that this man had obviously not appeared during his reign, a notable detail that eliminated all of the possibilities down to one Player.

"Sir KlubSanger. I presume?" Ainz asked in as deep a voice as his bed ridden body would allow.

The 'doctor' froze, his expression of general hospitality slowly morphed into one of strained self control and mild panic. "I am impressed that you know my name," he paused, implying the word **still** silently, " _Momonga._ Guildmaster of the most feared RPG Guild of the last century. I would ask how, but others who have returned from the Dragonlands have told me of your ferocious intellect and peerless logic, among other things." his tone was neutral but probing, begging for further information in everything except words.

"Mmmm. You came before me, some of your regalia made it into the vaults of Nazarick. My son particularly enjoyed your divine class instrument as it could change to suit his whims." Ainz said fondly, remembering how Pandora's Actor spun around and played out classic scenes for days using the unique item as a prop.

"Son? Were you not undead?"

Ainz coughed slightly at his blunder, this Player would be tricky to talk around, "Ah, yes. You didn't have any NPCs when you transferred. All of our members created at least one to guard the Great Tomb Of Nazarick, and in the lack of personality data, they gained their creator's, it was difficult to not consider them the guild's children when everything about them came from my guildmates."

He nodded, while wondering which of the myriad of NPCs in that cursed dungeon _Momonga_ had created. "You are incorrect, I had a set of summoned mercs with me to act as a backup chorus to a final performance by the Barbarian Bard. As you may have guessed, it was _not_ my final performance as the Barbarian Bard."

"I can only imagine the nightmare it must have been to deal with five of those badly constructed dimwits generated at random by the shitty devs. I met a couple in my second millennium, they were laughably awful."

KlubSanger laughed, "Yes, they grew on me though. They were loyal, and at least they didn't worship the ground that I walked on like the guild base NPCs I've heard tales of from other Players." he crossed his arms, one sleeved in red, and the other in green, bells jingled at his wrists and a full set of rings glittered on each hand. The doctor's scrubs over the top of everything only served to make the effect ridiculous. He sighed heavily, "Speaking of which, among the Players, it's fifty fifty, if we agree with what you did over there or not. The guards were actually posted to keep some of them out, we agreed that it was best to let you stay alive due to the possibility of unforeseen consequences dealing with Fate and Time magic."

Ainz paused at the thought, magical calculations streamed through his mind, and the unknown variables in his computations back home clicked into place with an alarming outcome. "We all were transferred in the same instant, at server shutdown. I must assume that at our moments of death we awoke over here as well."

The bard stayed silent, letting his patient come to conclusions that took the rest of them a year or more to figure out.

"This _human_ body has been asleep for more than three years, even with your bard skills," Ainz casually gestured to the building around him, "you would have needed time **here** to set this up, your avatar was human, assuming an identical rate of time passage, as is typical in time magic of all tiers, that would mean that you have been active here for awhile. So, we all awoke after a set amount of time in our avatars, dictated by our deaths over there, which was a coherent time line spanning millennia. _Fate magic indeed_. Was anything we did over there a choice that we ourselves made?"

"The fact that you have already puzzled through what took us years to figure out is impressive. Then again, you are the only Player who specialized in casting. That you can deduce so much can likely be attributed to your unique circumstances." his tone was carefully controlled, inoffensive, and held the weight of decades of dealing with royalty and their whims behind it. "To answer your question, I do not know. When the Seraphim guildmaster woke last year, he said that it was likely only the two of us who were unbound, _Lord Ainz_."

"The first and the last. The opener of the grand spell and the closer of it. That would keep the requisite balance of Fate magic. Basically no one could stop the other Player's deaths any more than anyone can halt the heavens for the simple reason that they had already died and returned to their original bodies."

KlubSanger nodded. "Which brings me back to another issue, you are only alive now because we were unsure what would occur in regards to our own predicaments if you were to be killed." his posture stiffened and his voice grew cold, "Percussi Pluma railed for days at the mere mention of killing you in your sleep until we sedated him long enough to get him to explain things, Enochian was difficult to understand, but, I _am_ a bard." he said smugly, "He's the one who explained the world binding fate magic that we were all subject to, I had no idea that it was even a branch of the Yggdrasil magic formula, it being difficult to implement the concept in a videogame and all."

"That's because it wasn't from Yggdrasil." Ainz said solemnly.

"What?" bells jingled near the floor as KlubSanger drug a chair over to the medical bed, he sat in it backwards.

"While there was a lot of reference to it in the game's lore, Fate magic is an advanced offshoot of soulcraft, soul magic, wild magic, whatever you want to call it. I will need to redo my calculations, my previous formulas need rebalancing to account for this turn of events."

"It was called soul magic in my time. I hated doing it, but I managed to pick up a few blood magic tricks during my later years." KlubSanger looked at one hand and waved it around spryly, "I am certainly not looking forward to getting old again. Ahh," he lifted a finger, "Just so you know, nobody else aside from you, me, and Percussi seem to have ever heard of it, although a few have seen it from the dragons."

Ainz paused in thought. "That is interesting, but not unexpected. Rank magic took over very quickly after your death. Presumably due to the massive fate spell overwriting reality with the far more potent Yggdrasil system as a second base. Players could only begin learning it after their soul had recovered enough of the spent energy used in the transfer over, which is why both you and I picked it up in our 'later years', I was roughly a hundred when I first successfully conjured a Soul Flame. Each race over there had a branch that they could utilize naturally, for undead it was soul flames. Humans use blood magic, dwarves have rune smithing, dragons conjured with elemental dominance, fate magic was the perview of angels to witness and enforce, although they had little control over it."

"Percussi mentioned that. Two thousand years trapped acting out his avatar's code of conduct through the universe without being able to do a thing about it, lashing out against the fate he was bound in. Most of us fared better out of the Dragonlands than him. Humans have proven to be the best off, with the dwarf next up."

"May I ask what happened to Percussi?"

KlubSanger bit his lip and puffed air in a manner that indicated being miffed, "Only because we are treating everybody involved in this as guildmates of a sort. Information is free between us. Other arrangements include not letting on that we still have our skills, abilities, inventories, and spells to outsiders other than spouses and true emergencies. No superheroics, not that I think I need to tell you."

Ainz chuckled at the last bit, "I agree to those terms." KlubSanger nodded, "But what of Percussi?"

"Last time he got out of the ward, he used a sewing needle to stitch his eyes shut, previous to that he was caught trying to cut off imaginary wings with a kitchen knife. Drowning himself in blessed water, starting an inferno of supposedly holy fire to burn away his body, going out of his way to get snake venom to inject, nothing has _killed_ him yet, and if you can get through the dam enochian it's terrible what he routinely screams at anybody who gets near." He shivered dramatically, trying to make it clear that talking about the matter further was unwelcome. "I'm the only visitor he has, nobody else can understand his ravings."

"That is too bad, I considered him a good friend for the couple millennia he was with us over there. When I can I would like to visit him. Enochian is one of the languages I jokingly put onto my character description for RP purposes."

"That might be a while. All of you non-humans have _problems_ ," he paused, "Wait, _you_ speak enochian? An undead?" he asked incredulously.

"I may be undead, but elder litches are mages who desired magical knowledge enough to foray into death after it. As an Overlord, an evolved elder litch, my race was particularly attuned to learning magic of all varieties, and the languages of spellcraft were no exception."

"Odd reason for a power gamer to give for odd tidbits in their character bio, I'm surprised you even had one."

"Do not be mistaken, I am a dream build. Most of my guild are."

KlubSanger started laughing. "That's a great joke. The most fee-ee-ared guild in Yggdrasil, hA HA, was com-pfffftt-posed of, hah, _dream builds_." he wiped a tear from one eye and composed himself, "I must apologize, but that _is_ difficult to believe."

"We only had, let's see, four? Power gamers, and among them, the only ones truly into getting a high DPS were Ulbert Alain Odle and Takemikazuchi. Peroronchino was obsessed with getting the perfect build, and I guess that you might be able to consider Touch-san as one as well, but the truth was, he was always just good at it." Ainz said wistfully, remembering truly ancient memories fondly. "I am surprised that you, the poster child for Dream Builds, couldn't recognize one at first sight."

"I never went out of my way to be the poster child of dream builds. I was just in it to have fun, never expected it to _stick_ the way it did." he said with a bitter laugh. "Ahh, there's a Yggdrasil II. The Devs reserved your player handle, and Nazarick intact for anybody who manages to get to the Throne of Kings, whatever _that_ is, of course it's still managed to repel invaders, almost double the last game's in fact. Which is impressive considering that they removed the level cap as well."

Ainz chuckled. His mana pool rose up to two. The arm holding his staff fell to the bed in exhaustion, atrophied _muscles_ reminded him of their pathetic existence. "The Throne of Kings, _MY throne_ , is one of the world level items hidden in the depths of my home."

The bard put up his hands at the tone, knowing perfectly well that any further information on the throne would have to be traded for or won in a duel. "Can I ask how many floors you put into the dungeon, nobody's made it past the eighth..."

"As expected of Victim, I must congratulate him on protecting the lower levels. Under those circumstances, then by all means, nobody will be able to get through except my guildmates or me. If you count the treasury, three below, each is more deadly than the one above it."

KlubSanger shook his head, jingles rang from a bouncing leg. "Even the Shitty Devs can't get through, if you make it, I will sing your praises till I die."

Ainz huffed, " _Praises_ , no matter how many I listened to I never liked them. Useful only in propaganda honestly. There are the masses, and then there are the powerful. Players, gods, some occasional kings, the damned _Dragon Lords…_ **We,** " he pointed frailly at a stoic faced bard, "Are the only ones with the ability to do anything of meaning. The rest live to muddle through in servitude, protected by those whom they dedicate their lives to."

"I never thought of the world in such a manner," KlubSanger said with a tight lipped smile that didn't reach his eyes. "It makes a lot of the reports about your Sorcererous Kingdom from various Players make more sense. Such a spread of opinions could only come from an outlook as _unique_ as yours." he scooted his chair away from the prone necromancer to start spinning in circles, "I have to say that in our circumstances it is quite logical, terrifyingly so. You are a very shrewd person Lord Ainz, or Momonga, we _do_ try to stick to using our actual names or our player handles. Any pseudonyms we accrued in the Dragonlands mean little to nothing on earth, and… with your guild's reputation, I would recommend not using it as a name, as it would equate to painting a target on you and anyone you might be around in the future. Magic has been severely limited in the transfer back, unlike skills…"

"I understand." Ainz said, cutting him off with a glare.

The other man stopped spinning, catching a hint of the embodiment of death laying in the medical bed out of the corner of his eye. A shiver ran up KlubSanger's spine, an instinctual reaction to the undead that came from a barbarian skill to detect unnatural occurrences. He faked a cough into a jinglebell lined hand to cover the unwanted movement. "I have a few more important points to talk to you about. First, do try to treat my nurses well, understand that they are _not_ NPCs, but they are _mine_ , while you are still recovering from three and a half years in a coma, I am not an enemy you want."

KlubSanger took a deep breath, ignoring a growing chill in the room. Unhappy undead did weird things to their surroundings. The glare intensified and the death grip on the staff had returned. "Secondly, I was not joking about all of you inhumans having _issues_ , your status as an undead can and likely _will_ have unforeseen consequences physiologically. Aimotos Potis, the only other undead Player, still needs to drink blood regularly to keep her health, lately she has been also complaining about a sensitivity to bright lights as well. Furosuti, the ice giant Player, has heat exhaustion problems in any temperature above a common room, if you add in Percussi, and a few others with extreme behavior problems, who are _clearly_ insane, you get quite the correlation. Until we can isolate and control these irregularities, the government has said that those with demihuman or heteromorphic races be removed from the workforce and placed on a watch list. _Persuasion_ is a potent skill, and I managed to get it down to a blanket 'Insanity' using it, most of us are categorized as NEETS, living with family, spouses, and friends."

"Friends…"

"Which brings me to point number three, you have no relatives on file. Once you are discharged from the hospital, a few months of rehab and monitoring, you will need a place to go."

"I remember no one from aarth aside from my guildmates and Players." Ainz said stiffly, his MP tipped up to four, agonizingly slowly compared to his usual regeneration. At least the doubling skill was working properly.

KlubSanger leaned over the back of the chair, his arms dangling like a puppet with it's strings cut, and sighed. "No offense, but for such a hardcore group of gamers, are any of them even _capable_ of supporting themselves?"

Ainz laughed and the room warmed a small degree, "There were actually three rules to joining my guild. The first one was obvious, play as a heteromorph, the second one was get accepted by a majority vote by the rest of the guild, and the third was that you had to be a functioning member of society. We all had jobs, steady incomes, lives outside of Yggdrasil…" he trailed off.

"The more I find out about your guild, the more impressive it is. You seem to have an impressive recall, fluff text about elder litches having eternal memory, I'm assuming," Ainz weakly nodded, "Would you have a suggestion about who to contact from your guild to help get you situated? Please keep in mind that they _**are**_ still human."

"Touchme would be the best choice. His kids should be grown by now, next up is my friend Peroronchino, and then Punnitto Moe."

"Would you have real names for any of them, or just their handles?"

"Not that I can recall. I regrettably forgot quite a bit before we were all transferred.

They both heard a brazen knocking at the closed door, KlubSanger flinched and nodded, taking a mental note of the names, bard skills were helpful in recitation, "Last two things, I promise. "JUST A MINUTE!" he yelled back at the door. Ainz snickered at the obvious barbarian shout underneath the thin veil of high education. "You know far more about magic and utilizing it than the rest of us. I ask that you look into fixing the other Player's ailments if you can. Any help in reconnecting us to the Dive technology would be welcome, as nanites seem to die off rapidly in our bloodstreams."

"Nanites… microscopic machines… Dive technology… how did that work again…" Ainz thought about it for a moment, "Aah! That likely has to do with mana in and around our bodies, we _can_ control the very elements around us, even unconsciously. Most branches of Yggdrasil magic and skill trees would cause interference with machines of such a minuscule size. I will need some good parchment to write on…"

There was another knock at the door.

" _ **Which**_ brings me to the last point," KlubSanger said in a half growl that was directed at the doorway behind him, " _Computers_." he reached into a pocket and pulled out a flat black tablet, "On button, touch screen, should be fairly user friendly." he pointed at each part of the device, "Do try to relearn how to use one."

Ainz looked at the black screen, using a machine like this was a foreign experience even for his few human memories. He used the hand that wasn't gripping his staff to poke a few times at it.

"Look, it's pretty much the only computer interface we've found that _works_ after a few minutes." He sighed again, "My staff know about magic, do not let anybody else learn about it. She is going to get you some food. I, as a doctor, do have other patients. I'm sorry that I can't stay longer right now, but paperwork is a doctor's bane, and I have plenty to fill out today. It's been eventful."

He stood up from the chair, bowed, and with jingling steps, hurried over to the door. A primly dressed nurse drove a cart covered in steaming bowls of food into the room while KlubSanger darted out quickly _without permission to leave_. The bells rang down the hall for a ways before going silent.

Ainz looked at the food with disdain, he had to sustain _flesh_ and a _body_. He whispered under his breath in exasperation, "This is no state for the Sorcerer King to be in."


	5. And in the Darkness of the Night

**A/N:**

 **Welp… I got another one written. I hope that you enjoy this, it's set between ch3 and ch2. Sorry it's a bit short, but I don't like dragging things out too much, and this one got drug out a bit.**

 **~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~**

White paint coated his fingers such that they looked like they should, long thin bones. His fingernails dug at the rug, peeling up the floor covering to reveal delicately painted sigils, runes, and geometric lines surrounded by varying sized circles.

Momonga panted at the exertion, still unaccustomed to anything that demanded _muscles_ , _breath_ , or the _living tissue_ that he was trapped within. His body was still atrophied badly enough that he required stamina boosting amulets and a basic strength talismans to even walk, things that he only carried around in his inventory for giving out to subordinates in dire situations. He sat on top of the rolled up rug, preventing it from ruining the incomplete magic circle at his feet.

Magical sparks flew from its borders, only visible to his eyes. Without the rest of the runes directing the sparks, the woven in illusion spells had no form.

He dipped the paintbrush in the bottle of white, hands shaking from four years of disuse. Another layer of skeletal white was added to his fingers as they hit the lip of the container. Momonga growled at his limbs for betraying his wishes, his eyes flared in frustration. Reflexively, he checked his MP, mentally calculated the mana cost, and quietly cast "[ **Steady** ]".

There was a small whirl of magic around his hands, a delicate light show that was only truly visible in the dark of the night. First level spells seldom did more outside the desired effect, and it was a good indicator of the Caster's true skill at magic by how little excess light their casting created. The higher the tier, the more of a lightshow it made no matter who cast it, one to two points of MP were consumed by the summoned ring to determine the spell no matter what. A cost that could be mitigated by a permanent circle hooked up to a mana generating charm.

Momonga felt the drain, a fatigue that nestled at the base of his ribs. It was familiar, the same fatigue gnawed any time he performed magic in this world. He got quickly to work, knowing that the spell only lasted an hour at a time and he didn't want to cast it a third time that night.

Runes spilled out of the brush tip elegantly and fluidly. The letters formed magical orders for a self perpetuating illusion spell of four senses, sight, sound, touch, and magic. The section for exiting the spell framework was completed the previous night.

The elder of Bukubukuchagama's children woke up in the night for a biological need, the young human stumbled down the hallway to the bathroom. Momonga froze, trying to avoid making noise, and hoping that the dark of the room would mask his activity.

Paint dripped off of the brush and onto the floor. He snarled silently, and rapidly closed his eyes at the slight red glow on the wall.

The toilet whistled a tune to mask the sound of defecation, and the young boy slowly trudged back to his room.

Momonga moved quickly in the dark, wiping off what he could of the spill. It created a crescent of dried paint that wouldn't come off, and would affect the circle's effects. He casually pulled out a stack of scrolls from his inventory to look at his notes, already calculating what issues this might cause.

He sighed, the magic senses would be off, not the worst of outcomes, but still annoying. It just meant that spells would seem fake. Momonga thought about this for a bit, "I guess it's a good thing actually, I don't want to fool myself into thinking that the illusions are real." he whispered.

With a quick note, he added the accidental glyph onto the grand draft, magically imprinting the notes to match his project.

Things that looked like pictograms, runes, and elvyn writing curled around newly painted circles, lines, and odd angles. Sparks of magic flew harmlessly in all directions, but never escaped the outer bounds of the spell.

As he finished the last few glyphs, and completed the last circle, the sparks flared into a dome of lights, making a temporary web before fading down again, waiting for their true activation.

Momonga smiled at the now complete circle while sitting on top of the rolled up rug. It would only take a few more minutes for the paint to dry. The spell faded, returning his hands to their previous state. He capped the paint, and dropped it and the brush into his inventory.

He touched the last dabs of paint, testing to see if they were dry. Momonga nodded into the darkness. He rather liked the privacy that it offered. "I'm just glad that my [Darkvision] came back, this would have been impossible otherwise." he whispered to no one, hoping that his quiet celebration at a job well done didn't wake up either Buku-chan or her children.

No more paint coated his hands, so he slowly uncurled the rug, covering over his handiwork and hiding it from view. He would tell his guildmate about it later, she didn't need to know about the prototype array for hooking up to the internet without nanites. Actually, she didn't need to know about how much magic he used on a regular basis.

"Dam that Cat!" he said just above a whisper. If it weren't for Meowgar then Bukubukuchagama's feelings towards magic could have been intertwined with other emotions instead of fear. He could see the nervousness in her eyes every time he got into his inventory or casually cast a spell, and it shattered his image of Buku-chan the unsinkable even as it reminded him so strongly of her son, Mare.

Momonga equipped a [Strength Talisman] and a very limited [Quieting Charm], letting him pick up and move the one possession from his previous human existence that he still had access to. His Gaming Chair. He had to be honest, memories of the thing were hazy at best, filtered through three and a half thousand years and further blurred by a faulty human memory unenhanced by [Dark Wisdom].

He maneuvered it into position, quickly draining the charm as it nulled the noise. A minute later and the required computer tower was poised over an exact location of the hidden magic circle under the rug. The charm fragmented into sparkling dust in his hands, fading off into Aether as it ran out of mana.

Momonga pressed the activation sigil on the front of the box, a replacement for the on switch after he gutted the computer and replaced it with five interlocked magic rings making a chain, an enchanted hand mirror, a wand with twenty MP that recharged a point every hour, and a ball of magic string to link everything together.

The computer revved to life, generated magic from the wand sparked function of the heavily altered machine, most of the functional parts of it were replaced with low level items Momonga cobbled together out of spare crystals and empty item shells in his inventory. The only parts left intact inside the black box were the uncopyable motherboard, and the piece of technology that allowed for machines to scry on each other. Momonga forgot what that one was called, but thought that it was something to do with Wee Fee Cart.

Buku-chan's child's nanite interface computer was similarly altered, as a test for his own, to make sure that his changes would still work. Over the last month, nobody noticed his night time tinkering. He was glad that he had experimented gradually like that, it allowed him to eliminate variables.

The project represented most of his offhand raw resources, but Momonga felt that the use would be worth it in the end. Still, using so much unrecoverable Data hurt his sensibilities. A lack in crafting classes made the work all the more difficult, and forced him to use his limited daily MP on [Steady] and [Guide Hands] spells just to craft the objects he required.

Momonga watched sparks flare upwards to form a dome made from borealis like light, visible only to someone sensitive to magic. It was a welcome sight. This world was so devoid of wonder that even his own low tier spells soothed an ache for home that he had only admitted to Buku-chan and Peroronchino.

Now that the array was complete Momonga let himself collapse into bed, trying to sleep to ease the fatigue building up in his _muscles_ and _flesh_ and _brain_. All things that he had done without for millennia. Eight months stuck in a human shell with only hints of his true form making themselves known. Darkvision, insomnia, and a noticeable improvement on his health around places with a concentration of death. Seeing the wellsprings of negative energy in this world hovering around graveyards and suicide hotspots was one of the first things that he took note of once the Barbarian Bard let him out of his care.

Momonga peeled off the dry paint from his fingers, letting his mind wander, flitting from topic to topic. He had yet to locate any other wellsprings of mana aside from negatively aligned ones. No druidic groves of growing trees, no truly holy blessed grounds, and a trip to the coast with Buku-chan's family revealed that even the elemental had seemingly been eliminated.

There were a few locations in Japan that would make suitable ritual locations should he require it in the future. Places where death steeped even the rock to overflowing. The lack of the other three types of magic was alarming to a degree, and it meant that he would have to add layers of ritual onto any casting to transform the mana through the cycle.

Death to Druidic to Elemental to Divine to Death again. Negative energy rots everything into the nutrients for life, which rejuvenates the elements it exists around and creates that which is holy for a brief time before the end of fleeting beauty generates negative energy once again.

This world was desiccated like the fallow of Gown's Fields. Repeatedly robbed of life before the restoration of the land could take place or routinely drenched in hundreds of years of bloodshed. Back home, that meant that undead would spawn, giving the excess negative energy a focus. Here, the negative energy merely built up to levels that threw Momonga's calculations for magic off.

Still unable to sleep, Momonga reached into his inventory and pulled out another stack of parchment attached to an [Invisible Floating Table] charm and a [Scry Quill] targeting his mind. It hovered above him, letting him peruse it's surface without fuss.

He looked over running equations balancing the odd aspects to Wild Magic, Tiered Magic, and now the idea of Planar Travel and how Data interfaced to all three. With his situation, it was clear that Data was attached to the Soul, which could get thrust between Planes and enacted to best fit the new realm's inner workings. But the method of doing so was still a mystery.

Old calculations merely had the Data interface to the Soul and the Tiered intrusion upon Wild Magic. They had never quite balanced, and Momonga thought that it was the inclusion of this third set of _unknown_ variables that might be what was missing.

Conceptual Planar Travel was something that was generated by technology here, a non-magical illusion weave that allowed mass communication. Nanites and The Internet. Both were almost antithetical to magic, to the point where Momonga commanded the [Scry Quill] to jot down a question in a language that may have once resembled Japanese but was heavily altered by magical runes and the Universal Grammar that alchemy and casting arrays required for function.

'Which came first, Magic or Technology?'

It was important to know, as in his memory, Magic was a previously fictional construct that only worked on a Conceptual Plane accessed through Technology. But if it was Magic that existed first, then the equation at his fingertips simplified elegantly, even if it left more variables with unknown true meanings.

Momonga gritted his teeth, there was a third option. A bizarre third option that _did_ eliminate variables and the previous question penned to the parchment.

'They came at the same time, just in different Planes.'

Dawn approached, hazy yellow light spilled through the smog stained window, ichorous in tint, it reminded him of the mist that held together the mounts of his armies, Soul Eaters. He wanted desperately to summon even a mid tier undead, mostly as protection against this world's horrors, but the agreement with the Barbarian Bard prevented him from doing so.

He angrily sighed, Bukubukuchagama was an early riser. With daylight approaching, he had to hide his magical items, and with them, his working notes on the universe.

One last note… Momonga rifled through the sheets, finding a mostly blank one, he crossed off the earlier, incorrect hypothesis and had the quill scribble out;

'How to make Planar Travel feasible. If feasible, energy cost, what type.'

Momonga's eyes lit up red, a chill ran down his spine. The answer was right at his fingertips.

"Soul Magic." he whispered, commanding the quill to write down the thought.

Bukubukuchagama's morning alarm sounded, and he heard her shuffling towards her doorway, ready to start her usual morning routine. Momonga shut off the magic, letting the stack of parchment crash down on top of his head, quickly he shoved all of it into his inventory.

She didn't need to know about his nighttime activities. He knew that she was under doctor's orders to ease him back into society by convincing him the last three and a half thousand years was all a dream. And because of the dam Cat, she knew that it clearly was not the case. So… she had taken it upon herself to wean him of magic.

That was not possible. Momonga knew it implicitly. His existence was magic. It would continue to be for the rest of eternity. He was an Overlord, a being born of willpower, necrotic energy, a soul, and a body that was forever halted at the point just before fading into druidic energies.

He sneered at the _flesh_ on his body, the distasteful sight of _skin_ , the weakness of _muscles_. There was too much to do in thirty years. Hopefully he could figure everything out before Life ended and his memories degraded into necrotic energy and faded into nothing through natural passing.

Bukubukuchagama walked past his door, pausing long enough to see him lying awake on his bed before entering the same restroom as her son just a few hours ago.

The shower gushed notably clean water. It was one of his first projects to see if he could interface magic and technology. Water creation in the form of his eternal pitcher and water destruction talismans from Yggdrasil that were overly plentiful in the Desert of Amun and pretty much useless otherwise. Buku-chan was aware of the change, it was a way to pay her back for letting him stay with her and her children. Part of the agreement after the dam Cat attacked.

Being able to drink the water in the home was unheard of in this world. No surprise with the aligned mana in such disarray.

Momonga got up, slowly, he really had exerted himself the previous night, and slid down the stairs to the kitchen. While he was not as adept as Buku-chan at preparing meals, the months had allowed a few things to be learned.

Boiling of water for tea and premade noodles, a basic use of a pan for pancakes, and which flavor pouches Buku-chan's children liked together. On Monday mornings like this, it was becoming common for him to prepare breakfast and help the family get out the door for school and work.

After a few minutes, the water stopped gushing and he heard his guildmate pound on the children's doors to wake them up for school.

The aroma of fried nutrient batter and tofu bacon wafted through the house. Momonga could sort of smell it, but only barely, he figured it was a downside to being undead, smell and taste were dulled, he only ate to keep his _living_ body alive. He put a couple flavor pouch tubes into the microwave and turned it on for five minutes.

Momonga sighed, the oven and microwave were next on his home improvement list, anything to eliminate the bills, water was taken care of, and the next one was electricity.

The microwave dinged that it was done. Momonga slathered each pancake with two or three flavor pastes, rolled them up into tubes, placed the plate of tofacon on the table next to the rolls, and slowly began munching on his own roll.

Bukubukuchagama was the first down the stairs, which creaked at every step.

"Morning Momonga." she blinked at the food like Aura blinked at anything that pleased her, then the same beaming smile graced her face, "Thank you for breakfast. I gotta get going, it's a long recording session. Don't forget your physical therapy today."

He nodded, "Thank you for the reminder Buku-chan."

The kids stormed like thunder through the house, each one grabbing their roll and some tofacon before rushing to the entryway. Momonga watched them swallow the food fast enough to make Kyohouko wonder where it went.

"Thanks Momonga! See you after school!"

Momonga chuckled, and indicated towards Buku-chan silently, it was a rule he perpetuated in his Kingdom, to always respect your parents and honor their desires in your day to day life. It helped cut down on wayward children of families with behavior problems, which meant fewer uprisings against his rule.

"Bye Mom." said the older one, "Good luck recording today." the younger one waved at their mother, Momonga nodded at that, the kids were learning good manners at the very least.

They both hurriedly put on their protective gear in the entryway, gloves, coats, face masks and boots, then they were out the door like a shot.

"You are a life saver Momonga." she said as she too put on protective gear for the pollution outside.

He shrugged, "I live by our guild's ideals. Be a productive member of society. I physically can't hold down a job, so… I'll do what I can anyways."

"Don't do too much, and don't use that teleportation item to get to therapy!"

 _Damn,_ he thought, but acted being amused at the concept instead of irritated at her restriction, "Alright. Now get going before you're late."

Bukubukuchagama waved goodbye as she closed the door behind her.

Momonga waited a few minutes to make sure that no one was coming back and pulled out his notes again.


	6. Do Not Think Me Frail

A/N: Here's the next chapter folks, to all fifteen of you who read this. Last chapter I got some anonymous reviews… I would love to reply to you, but… oh well. One of you was positive, and I hope that this chapter continues on with your expectations, to the other person who was so confused that they decided to quit reading for their own sanity… I'm sorry that I'm writing non-linearly. What you are seeing is chapters as I write them. Unedited, unbetaed, and merely used as a way to get me to start writing before I go on to work on my actual original fiction. A writer's block icepick if you were.

I will say that this story does have a point, it does have a coherent timeline. I'm just a frikkin slow ass writer. Gloves are off for what I would deem 'intro' chapters. You should know the general idea by now. I promise to always put where a chapter fits into the timeline thus far into the chapter's A/N.

For instance: This one is WAY after everything up till now. Three years after "Breakfast Chat" Enjoy.

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Ryotaku casually pulled a chair away from one of many tables in the public promenade, the chain at the base of the leg drug along the tiles of the floor, wearing down another layer of colorant, leaving the formerly orange flooring a dirty grey of concrete. This was his favorite table to sit at in the food court on this level of publicly owned mall, in a corner facing the rest of the room. His law firm was five floors above, and he was a regular of this food court during lunch break.

Lunch was placed on the old plastic table, it tilted slightly, like usual. Steaming food created a plume of fragrance that had the middle aged man salivating. He pulled out a pair of chopsticks from a box in his pocket.

The food was why he kept to this court in general, as lower floors had cheaper fare that more resembled toothpaste in consistency than the faux chicken, rice, and beans in front of him. Even on his salary he couldn't afford to eat on any of the higher floors, the ones that served real produce instead of processed nutrient paste. The floors closer to the Domes at the top of every skyscraper, the floors that resembled the Arcologies that the truly rich lived in.

He was about to take a bite of toficken when the gaunt emaciated figure of Momonga appeared a few feet away from his table from between pedestrians. The sight of his old guildmaster caused him to pause, making eye contact with those nearly hollow sunken pits of eyes. Ryotaku gulped, there was a decisive edge to the man that he had a hard time reconciling with the memory of someone usually so self depreciating when they played together almost fifteen years before.

Momonga tapped his lavishly decorated cane on the floor, creating a loud but muffled snap. Briefly his odd black and purple billowy clothes fluttered in non-existent wind. Ryotaku chalked it up to a cooling airfiltrator turning on from behind his old friend.

"Touch-Me-San, I need to ask you something."

Ryotaku glanced around, looking for anybody who might recognize his old pen name. Unlike most of the rest of the guild, he had been a highly public name and face of their group, and due to the fact that player handles were reserved by the Devs, his was a name that still floated around in hushed whispers of awe from players of Ygg2.

Of course, it was nowhere near the fame that the man in front of him sported inside the game, the only player ever to solo a raid dungeon, and that dungeon being Nazarick only made the feat more talked about. That was three or so years ago now, and since then, the hoard of players trying to raid their old base only grew.

"What is it Satoru-san?" he asked, using his friend's real name instead of the handle from the game, following long held doctor's orders for the purpose of getting his friend back into society by doing so.

Momonga's grip on a large sapphire capping an otherwise charcoal black rod tightened, the miscellaneously colored and patterned gems and rings adorning each finger glinted strangely in the harsh florescent lighting of the windowless food court. Briefly Ryotaku felt a shiver run down his spine and noticed a flash of red light from the pair of sunken pits of eyes.

"It is only because you are a guildmate that my patience hasn't run thin Touch-San. Must I continue to tell you that my name is, _at the least_ , Momonga?" he growled out in frustration, hoping that this time the order would stick. "Your Son and likeness, Sebas, was always the most dutiful butler, and never failed an order given to him." the _why are you not the same_ was implied by the look of disappointment on Momonga's gaunt face.

"Sebas didn't exist _Satoru-san_." Ryotaku pointedly said, purposefully emphasizing his guild master's name. Four years should have been long enough to snap him out of actually believing the things he spouted. "That thing was nothing more than a string of data and written descriptions, an NPC."

Ryotaku watched Momonga lean forward onto the cane, his free hand outstretched in a Yggdrasil command for performing magic. Emaciated fingers that looked more like bones than hands tilted the cane in such a way that Ryotaku wondered what magical effect was currently being woven inside his old friend's mind. Momonga snarled. "As much as I would like to argue the point Touch-Me-San..."

"It's Fujiwara Ryotaku in a public place like this. I am a respected lawyer now, and a police officer before that." he quieted down, almost whispering, "Like the rest of _our guild_ , my livelihood would be at stake if it were found out that I was connected to Ainz Ooal Gown." Ryotaku placed a piece of fake chicken into his mouth while it was still warm, he knew from experience that it would be unpalatable once it cooled. While he was looking down, there was an odd green flash of light. He looked up quickly, trying to find the source.

"No, no. Circumstances, everything comes down to circumstances." Momonga calmly muttered to himself, his right hand grasping his chin. His expression was blank instead of harboring palpable anger. "Touch-Me-San," Ryotaku half glared at the man standing in front of him, "I will get down to the point. Who killed Bellriver."

The second piece of chicken was halfway down his throat, Ryotaku choked. "Seriously?" he gasped, catching his breath, "Out of everything you could ask me… you ask that?" he put down his chopsticks, giving up on having a peaceful meal. "Read the official report, he died of an accident. Sato…" Momonga glared daggers at him, daring his old friend to call him by a pathetic human title. " _Momonga_." he barked out, "It was an accident. An. **Accident.** " he punctuated each word with a flurried gesture pointing first at Momonga and then at the table, tapping the surface violently. The world weary table wobbled under the abuse, sliding the tray of food from one edge to another.

"I am _legally insane_ not _**stupid**_ Touch-Me-San." Momonga replied darkly. "Bellriver was not of the lower stations of life in this world's society. Therefore a premature death, such as his, could be no mere **accident**."

Ryotaku had to admit the logic, had to admit at least to himself that the man standing in front of him was right. He kept a straight face.

Momonga continued, a random passerby walked straight between the two of them without a single glance at either of the men. "Fine. I shall start at the beginning. My Son, Pandora's Actor found a mysterious record that was left in the treasury by Bellriver."

He laughed, relaxing at that, anything concerning their old guild base coming from their insane guild master was a load of bull. Full of stories and odd mannerisms that were impossible even if dozens of other Yggdrasil coma patients corroborated the insanity. All easily chalked up to a shared nanite dream, an extension of the internet practically, reports of those were as old as the technology itself, even if they were unheard of in the last fifty years.

"This was, of course, after I finished reading the full contents of Ashurbanipal and any stray documents that all of you left laying around. Bellriver's quarters along with his section in the library were a treasure trove of first, second, and third hand information concerning long term political tampering. But all of that paled in comparison to the encrypted data he put into a tome inside of Nazarick's inner treasury. Of course by the time we found it, Demiurge already surpassed its listed techniques, and so I placed it in my personal inventory for safe keeping."

Ryotaku felt sick. His eyes scanned the people milling around them, looking for anybody who was listening in on what they were talking about. He grabbed the table corner, ready to leap to his feet in a heartbeat if anybody moved suddenly. "D-don't keep going Sato...Momonga." Ryotaku pleaded, suddenly quiet, his whisper barely audible in the din of their surroundings, "If they think you know something… they will kill you too." he sounded like a broken man.

Momonga stood straighter, his shoulders relaxed as a faked sense of being an utterly downtrodden human evaporated like it had never been there in the first place. There was an ease about him that said he was accustomed to displaying the wealth he was wearing without fear.

"Touch-Me-San, do not think me frail." Momonga warned, pulling millennia of rulership into that one statement. The cane in his hand glinted in the florescent lighting of the public area, as did a few of the rings.

"Frail?" he asked, "Frail!?" his knuckles gripped the table hard enough to go white. "You're nothing but the definition of frail! If I didn't know better I would think that you were the personification of death itself." All Ryotaku could think of was that at least this was away from talking about _that_.

Momonga chuckled lightly at hearing one of his more deserved titles. "As are all Liches."

"That's what you were in the _**game**_ Dammit!" Ryotaku snapped back, looking away by focusing on another concrete colored patch underneath a nearby table caused by a chained chair. "I realize that you believe you lived in a fantasy world where you ruled over Nazarick of all things," he waved his hand in the air emphatically, then pointed at the ground, "But this is reality. _Reality_. Stop thinking like that and get a job already. Hikuri can't keep supporting you, especially if you're just going to waste money buying Ygg2 merch." he pointed at the odd collection of rings and jewelry to prove his point.

"My equipment is not a paltry imitation crafted by exhausted workers. Nor is it important right now. I need to know what happened to Bellriver, and I need to know who knew what he knew."

"Get a grip _Momonga_." a group of people walked their way, happily talking about an upcoming wedding, each carrying their own plate of food. "If this weren't one of the rich layers on this building you walking around like that would get you attacked instantly."

He pointed a spindle finger at a pink stoned ring, "Do not worry about any violence erupting for a few minutes." Momonga said while tapping it with a bony finger. The surface swirled like boiling glitter. "It's a [Peace Keeper's Ring], causes low level mobs to ignore Hate Values unless directly provoked."

Ryotaku growled in frustration at the horrendously overconfident man in front of him, and tried to pull out some of his hair while he was at it. " _ **Game**_. It was all a _**Game**_."

"No Touch-Me-San. It is not." Momonga stated simply, taking on a tone that belied the millennia he had lived through. "Just like Bellriver's death is no game, my life has not been one long play session of Yggdrasil."

He looked around again, specifically at the group of six people who had stopped talking about the upcoming wedding and were now chatting amicably about Ygg2. Despite being within hearing distance of them, none of their party seemed to have overheard their odd conversation.

"Now, while my illusion craft is good, I currently don't have the MP to sustain both of the [Sense Blind] spells I cast when I teleported here. Once this staff is drained, the spells will wear off and our privacy will be shattered. Fortunately the anti-divination skills I have are sufficient to block any scrying of other Players in this world. But Technological means will be open in a few minutes."

At that Ryotaku groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to hide the shame his insane friend should be feeling at believing anything of what he just spouted. He grabbed his chopsticks and snarfed as much of the toficken as he possibly could. The 'rice and beans' he knew could be reheated back in his office, but the chicken would turn into rubber soon.

"To get back to the earlier topic, Bellriver was one of the last players from our guild to log in, three days before the server shutdown was announced. That day was the last well put together raid attempt upon Nazarick in the original Yggdrasil world. The raiders didn't get far, and I believe that they had to give up because of the overwhelming force on the first three floors."

"Due to the constant barrage and previous raid sizes, Nazarick and all of her contents are actually hosted on a separate server typically used for loading maps of heavily trafficked areas. So it could not be taken offline. Meaning the Devs couldn't remove any information from Nazarick."

Momonga paused to let the information sink in, purposefully ignoring the look of flat denial the likeness and creator of Sebas Tian had in his eye. Silently he cursed the Barbarian Bard for foisting him with the _insanity_ label, it made getting information so much more difficult, and it made convincing anybody even more so.

Ryotaku ate slower, now out of toficken chunks, if his old guildmaster wanted to ramble, then let him ramble. He still kept an eye for anybody in the room that looked like they were even remotely interested in either of them. Nobody batted an eyelash in their general direction. It was actually getting eerie to the avid people-watcher, not to be noticed back.

"This means that up until the server shutdown, the depths of Nazarick's treasury, in this world, were the safest place for anybody to put data they wanted to keep hidden, locked away, or out of someone's reach. To this day, the treasury still is. Bellriver was correct in that assumption." Momonga shrugged, it looked more like a clawed hand pawing at the air. He ground the cane into the floor with the other hand, "Now, I found out that he was dead a couple years ago. I do not appreciate being left in the dark about this fact, but for _now_ I will overlook your involvement in that."

He gulped at the forcefulness in the Guildmaster's voice, there was a promise in it that Ryotaku couldn't deny.

"Once I conquered Nazarick in Ygg2, I had private access to everything in it. They kept every single detail exactly as it was at the server shutdown, except for one record. The book of encrypted data Bellriver left in the treasury. It was conspicuous in its absence honestly. If they had left a dummy book in its place I would never have put all of this together."

"What?" Ryotaku asked at the mention of the cursed earlier topic, stiffening again at the mention of their former guildmate. His thoughts caught back up to him, and logic won out, it was another impossible statement from his old friend, "You are insane."

Momonga sighed. "Dam KlubSanger and his stupid insistence upon labeling all of the heteromorph Players insane!" He stepped forward to avoid getting walked into by a middle aged man who was clearly looking around for someone specific, all the while repeatedly looking at Ryotaku's table. He walked off, hitting the black top surface of his phone hard with his finger. "As I was saying, the encrypted data was put into a tome in Nazarick, found by my Son, Pandora's Actor, and then I put it into my inventory for safe keeping. This was where it stayed for the subsequent years of my reign as the Sorcerer King."

Ryotaku glared at Momonga, trying to get him to admit that he was lying through his teeth about things that came straight out of his imagination. This wasn't even the lighter toned drivel that he usually spouted about dragon freight, dwarf marriage practices, riding around on a giant hamster, or watching the enjoyment on a warrior's face as they saw Ia Shub Niggurath being cast for the first time.

The confidently standing former lich shook his head, "There is nothing you can say or do that will get me to deny my reign, to deny magic exists, or to say that what I am telling you right now is false Touch-San." The color on the [Peace Keeper's Ring] dulled, "Hmm, we are running out of time. I must demonstrate this quickly then." Momonga reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of golden wire framed spectacles. "These are [Translation Glasses], put them on briefly."

The man came back around, this time with a plate of food, and sat across the table from Ryotaku. The table leaned towards the newcomer as the man put his elbow on the table and scanned the area for whoever he was looking for. "Oi. Hey! Get your own table man!" Ryotaku said while waving in his face.

"Do not bother Touch-San. As I told you earlier, I double cast [Sense Blind], once for sound, and once for sight as I teleported in. We are imperceptible to the humans around us until my staff runs out of MP." Momonga pushed the glasses onto Ryotaku's face.

There was dawning realization from Touch-San the more he waved at the man sitting across from him. He touched the back of his neck, and blinked in panic at still finding his own computer port attached to his skin there. Ryotaku's mouth hung open as he pulled the tiny lensed glasses off his face.

Momonga reached into the air in front of himself in a gesture that was one of four non-default selections a player could make for accessing their inventory. A memory from oh so long ago of watching the lich avatar of the man in front of him testing out which one felt right for his RP and settling on number three because it seemed the best for a mage came to Ryotaku. Default was to pull your inventory out of your right pocket, and number one was to pull it out of your opposite pocket across your body, most rogues and thief classes took that one or the one where you pulled from the base of your back.

Purple miasma pooled around a black cloud as Momonga's arm faded into a temporary hole in reality. Ryotaku backed into the wall, straining the chain attached to the chair his feet were tangled up in. "Bellriver's death is much more important to me than _secrecy_ Touch-San. I have already done what I can to adhere to PKing for Dummies, locking out scrying in both magical and technological means. Still, if I were to be found out by the rest of the Players, they would have an agreed upon cause to come after me, and while I can take any of them one-on-one, if even two of them team up, I would lose."

"H-h-ho-" Ryotaku gulped down air, "How?" his eyes fixated on how his guildmaster's arm appeared to end just below the elbow in a cloud of particle effects straight out of Yggdrasil.

"This book is the physical representation of the encrypted data that Bellriver placed in the bowels of Nazarick's treasury." he pulled out a thick unassuming brown leather bound book from his inventory. It had no title, it had no other marks on the surface, and the pages appeared to be made out of parchment instead of paper. Edges wrinkled with age, but still neatly sanded down to a solid surface, kept from disaster by being held inside of a player's inventory for thousands of years.

Momonga held it out in offering to Ryotaku, who slowly sat back down in his seat and took the tome carefully.

"You will need the [Translation Glasses] to read it, the writing is still encrypted."

Ryotaku gingerly opened the cover, blinking down at nonsense before putting the wire framed glasses on and squinting through their bottlecap sized lenses. Instantly he shut the book. "Momonga, hide this, don't show it to anybody." he whispered desperately, "Give up your pursuit on this one." trembling hands forced the tome back.

"I will not." Momonga said plainly, he was used to getting his way, and some pathetic fear tactics coming from mere humans would not deter him in the slightest.

"They will kill you for this. They will kill anybody they think you might have told. If not killing then blackmail, career destruction, kidnapping. If we had this after Bellriver was found dead it might have been different, but… don't keep prying."

" _They_ can try all they like." Momonga grabbed the book and glasses back, returning them to his rip in reality. "Buku-Chan and her children have wards and trip spells surrounding them and their house, as does Peroronchino. Yamaiko too has a trip spell bracelet and is armed. Hero-hero, Punnitto Moe, and Tabula Smaragdina are… adequately protected. Ulbert and Luci*Fer too are taken care of. All of our guildmates have a trip spell on them at the very least, the ones I've talked to have their guild rings as well." his arm returned carrying a golden ring with a red gemstone, the symbol of the Sorcerous Kingdom and the Guild emblazoned in its center. "Nine's Own Goal might have known defeat, but the name Ainz Ooal Gown never will so long as I live."

Ryotaku shivered at the threat hidden in those words. Their guild was known for a reason. Lots of reasons actually. Despite being the smallest guild in the first hundred rankings, they were in the top ten for capabilities in the game. Even though they were inactive until Momonga started playing Ygg2, their legacy in the form of the unconquerable dungeon was secure. The guild was so well known that once Bellriver started digging where he shouldn't have, all of their names were put on watch by the government. A fact that Bellriver, Ulbert, and Luci*Fer all found hilarious and terrifying at the same time. It was why they had only ever had one IRL meeting with everybody in their guild.

With a gesture that indicated practiced ceremony, Momonga slid the oversized ring onto Ryotaku's left hand thumb. Like its other ninety-nine companions, it shrank to fit the wearer. The lawyer shivered at the familiar sensation of equipping an item from Yggdrasil. Something that he hadn't felt since he was forced to quit by political scandal.

Clear beads of water formed at the edges of Ryotaku's eyes, "They have my _wife_ , they have my _children_." he was breaking inside again.

"As relations to the guild, I will protect them under the name of Ainz Ooal Gown." Momonga leaned heavily on his cane, his right hand wrapped around the twisting sore spot just below where his _stomach_ was. "Quickly Touch-San. Who killed Bellriver?" he asked with a wince.

"I… don't know their names, just where they get their jobs…" Ryotaku said quickly.

The man sitting on the opposite side of the table jumped back, the chain on his chair snapped taught and he fell over.

"Momonga…"

"Later. I'll find you when I can." Momonga snapped his fingers and vanished like he had never been there.

The air warmed suddenly, and the atmosphere in the promenade grew quiet at the sudden appearance and disappearance of the strangely dressed man. Ryotaku collapsed into the chair below him like a puppet with its strings cut.

The man whispered "Momonga…" while typing onto his now lit phone screen from the floor.

"Who are you?" Ryotaku asked, suddenly wary of the unassuming man, his cop and _player_ instincts were triggered by the way he was reacting. Punnitto Moe had hammered the tactics of PKing for dummies into everybody in the guild. While he never participated in revenge raids, he still knew how to set one up, and how to spot one.

"Um… ah… nobody?" he said before untangling his legs and practically running out of the room.

"Shit." Ryotaku said while looking down at the guild ring wrapped around his thumb tightly. Like equipped items in the game, he couldn't even tell that it was on his thumb. He tried to pull it off, to no avail. "Seriously?" he exclaimed to nobody. "Man, I hope nobody recognizes the symbol."


End file.
